Interview about Khat with Paul Cochrane

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The following interview about Khat with Paul Cochrane discusses various issues surrounding Khat consumption and culture. Paul Cochrane is a journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, covering the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Paul encountered and experienced Khat cultures first-hand through his travel in the Middle East. Paul's opinion and testimony do not endorse any particular treatment center.
Thank you for allowing me to interview you today. Can tell me a little bit about yourself? How do you first come to learn of Khat?

I first came across khat when reading Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land by Tim Mackintosh-Smith. An avid khat chewer, Mackintosh-Smith brings up khat and its popularity in Yemen. I further encountered khat when studying for my Masters in Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut. Khat is a significant problem in Yemen, having a major impact on the economy, with an estimated 50% of Yemenis income going to acquire khat. Yemen is exceedingly poor, the poorest country in the Middle East and North Africa, so khat addiction clearly has an impact on spending, on children, nutrition and so on. Furthermore, it is putting immense stress on water resources. Khat is very water intensive to cultivate, and Yemen has water shortages, while cultivating khat means that other crops are not grown.

2. How and at what point during the course of your traveling did you first come to encounter Khat?

I first encountered and tried khat in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2008. I had met some young Ethiopians at a coffee shop, and they invited me to a small room above the cafe to chew khat. I was interested to do so as I wanted to write an article about khat in Ethiopia (see http://backinbeirut.blogspot.com/2008/05/high-in-harar-on-khat.html). During my travels there, I went to Harar, a major khat centre 10 hours drive from the capital, where I went to khat markets, visited khat farms, met dealers, distributors and rode delivery trucks.

3. As an organic drug, how is it generally produced and consumed?
Khat is a unique drug in that it has to be consumed within 24 hrs. It consists of cathinone and cathine, and it is the cathinone that produces stimulatory effects, 10 times more potent than cathine. As khat only has its effect within that time frame, it is a highly organized process from picking to sorting to delivering it in time to users - who want it as fresh as it can be. Apparently a pharmaceutical company in Kenya is working on trying to turn khat into a pill that would essentially freeze the khat's stimulatory properties. If this was developed, it would revolutionize the khat trade.
Khat is grown in fields, needing plenty of water, and the bushes grow pretty high, above head height. It is harvested very early in the morning, taken to a market where it is sorted - usually by women - into bundles according to its quality. Good khat is very expensive. It is then transported to markets in towns for people to buy, or placed on Isuzi flat bed trucks that drive at breakneck speed - hence the nickname "Al Qaeda trucks," as in the suicidal recklessness of the drivers - to airports or ports where it is then transported to neighbouring countries: Djibouti, Yemen, Uganda in particular, while also to Europe where it is not illegal and there is a sizeable East Africa/Yemeni expatriate populace, such as in London. In terms of consumption, it is a very sociable practice. Around midday, men - although women do take it - gather together, in rooms, on the street, in houses etc. and sit around plucking the leaves, a few millimetres under the stem. The leaves are then rolled into a ball in the hand, then put under the cheek and chewed. In Ethiopia, the khat is swallowed. In Yemen they spit it out. As it is quite bitter, people take it with peanuts and a soft drink. As khat sets in, after about 20 minutes, you get what is called in Amharic (the Ethiopian language) "merkhana" - high - and then you start talking avidly, music gets more intense. After a few hours you start getting introspective, which is when the group usually breaks up and people go their separate ways. It is a stimulant though, so some take it to study, read, write. It is hard to get to sleep though, so some people drink alcohol or smoke hashish to put them to sleep.

4. Khat is popular amongst many Middle Eastern and East African countries such as Ethiopia, and Yemen, from your personal traveling experience can you tell us about the general Ethiopian perception of Khat?
Khat, or chat as they call it in Ethiopia, is very widely consumed and has been done so for hundreds of years. Less though in the capital where it is not grown. It is popular with people from the north, and around Harar and Dire Dawar, in the east near the Somali border. In these areas there is no religious disapproval, certainly in Harar which is a very Muslim town - I saw a imam in a mosque sprawled on the carpet happily chewing away. It is even taken in the local prison. But in the capital I found some people disapproved, and the more religious Christians very much against it. Politicians also take it and there are stories of lavish khat chewing sessions among the elite.

5. Can you tell us of one memorable experience or encounter with Khat and/or Khat users?
I had lots of curious experiences with khat and khat users, from chewing on buses, in bars, on the street, to lying on the floor in a hotel lobby in the mid-afternoon with a group of men all indulging in khat, to chewing fresh khat with a farmer in his field - it is very addictive, and people chew it all the time. The strangest though was going with a wealthy Ethiopian friend to his house in the capital. Inside the compound they had a private mosque, with a sheikh reciting verses from the Quran. My friend, who works in Saudi Arabia, had told me not to talk about women or anything haram (sinful), yet here we were in a mosque drinking Ethiopian coffee and chewing khat amid a lot of frankincense burning away. Then a woman came up, and told my friend how a sheikh had cured her of breast cancer, then showing us the result; then a dwarf - a servant - came in bringing refreshments. It was all quite surreal, with or without chewing khat!

6. As a journalist, can you tell us about some of your observations concerning the noticeable perks and (social as well as personal) downsides of chewing Khat? Based on your opinion and experience, how is Khat different from other recreational drugs and products that are out there in the U.S. such as alcohol, coffee, marijuana, and opiates?
First, the pros. It is a stimulant, in fact used before coffee (which was discovered in Ethiopia) and similar to cocoa leaves. Students often take it to help them concentrate and study for long periods. It certainly had that affect on me, as I slept very little during my trip there, and on several occasions I didn't notice that I was reading for a straight three odd hours, only realizing when I looked at the clock and it was 2am. Athletes also take it, and you do walk faster during the initial few hours. Khat is a very sociable activity, triggering debate and making people very talkative.
On the downsides, it is very addictive. People spend a good amount of time everyday getting buying and then taking their fix. I noticed how addictive it was, as by midday the day after chewing khat, I could taste it inside my cheek, I wanted it. Curiously, as you take it into your digestive system in Ethiopia, I found my skin, certainly my arm pits, smelt of khat and my bodily deposits were green.
But while the sociable side is positive in many respects, the introspection is less so, as it turns people inward - which could be used constructively, like reading or writing, but in most cases is not. And this is the time when men would usually return home to their family.
Khat is ruining many people's lives and families because so much income goes towards khat, easily 50% or more if you are poor - so less money for food, clothes, education etc. and takes up a good portion of a person's day, with work usually confined to before lunch. Good khat is very expensive, at $10 to even $50 for a bushel. In Ethiopia to get good khat where they produce it costs around $6, poorer quality a few dollars. But most people in Ethiopia only earn a few dollars a day. Another downside is that people eat less, as the chewing makes the body feel it is eating, and as a stimulant it represses the appetite, so people can be undernourished as a result, able to go for long periods of time without eating. Addiction, like addiction to all drugs and alcohol, can also result in losing one's job, house etc. In Harar I saw many men living on the street that were khat users. One man had lost his teeth, so was using a mortar and pestel to crush the khat as he couldn't chew it. I did not hear of Ethiopians turning to crime though to fund their habit.
As I said earlier, khat cultivation means that other crops are not grown as it is much more lucrative for farmers to grow khat. It is water intensive, so it has negative effects on the environment, especially as this part of the world often lacks abundant rainfall (although less the case in northern Ethiopia). In Yemen this is a very pressing issue.
Ethiopians told me khat was not harmful, with users praising it, and did not result in sexual problems such as impotency, organ failure or memory loss, although medical research has shown otherwise, particularly in long term users. However, not enough medical research has been done on the medium to long term effects of khat usage.

Go India, Go! A Referendum for Kashmir Is Needed

by Paul Cochrane in New Delhi, October 15 - dissidentvoice.org

I was sitting with some Kashmiri friends in their apartment in the New Delhi area of Lajpat Nagar, just a stone’s throw away from the Nehru Stadium, one of the sports complexes India has shelled out $9 billion to host the Commonwealth Games (CWG). The CWG, which brings together the 71 countries and territories of the former British Empire, was about to launch, and on a national TV channel the slogan was “Go India Go.”

Sprawled out on Kashmiri carpets, we were discussing the grave situation in Kashmir over the past four months. Since June 11, when the Indian army shot at unarmed demonstrators, over 100 Kashmiris have been killed, including women and children, and the Kashmir Valley has been under total curfew. Half a million Indian soldiers carry out patrols, raise check points and bunkers, ID anyone out and about, and shoot to kill without any hindrance or worry about being hauled up in front of a military tribunal – the diabolical Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has seen to that, letting soldiers, quite literally, get away with murder.

The conversation turned to how different this summer had been from the violence, protests and strikes of previous years. “It’s the worst it’s been in 20 years,” said Hamid, who is in his early 50s. “People are totally fed up with being stuck inside, the schools closed, and food supplies running out. Kashmiris have had enough.”

In 1989, a popular rebellion – a Kashmiri intifada – against Indian misrule began, further stoked by militant Islamic groups funded and supported by Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) in the wake of the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, sending scores of Afghan veterans and Azad Kashmiris across the Line of Control (LoC) that separates Indian Jammu and Kashmir, and the Pakistani Azad (free) Kashmir (China has the remaining 20%, Aksai Chin, claimed by India). This proxy war between Pakistan and India, that remnant of Partition in 1947, put the Kashmiri populace in the middle. Intifada after intifada has occurred since 1989 and the Indian army has cracked down hard, notably in 2001, when over 1,000 civilians were killed. Over 45,000 Kashmiris have been killed over that 20 year period. Last year 72 civilians died at the hands of the Indian armed forces.

One major difference this year from former crises, when feelings simmered to a boiling point and Kashmiris took to the streets, is that this time there has been minimal militancy – apart from of the stone throwing kind and rioting. Sympathy with the militants has waned – particularly for Pakistani-backed groups – but anger with New Delhi’s political dillydallying and iron fist policy in tackling the “Kashmir issue” has spiked. The youth are not interested anymore in siding with New Delhi or Islamabad. The youth want independence, or, at worst, autonomy from India. The slogan at the huge protests that filled the streets of the summer capital, Srinagar, was “Go India Go,” particularly by the Quit Kashmir Movement and All Parties Hurriyat Conference. As we talked of this, the slogan flashed up on Times News channel as part of its CWG coverage. We all spotted the irony and started laughing: “GO India, GO!”

My friends are like many Kashmiris, forced to leave the valley for New Delhi some 1,000 kilometers away or even further afield in search of employment, selling carpets and other Kashmiri handicrafts, that major money earner that disappeared as the tourists stayed away. Indeed, the situation has been so precarious over the past decade that numerous guidebooks on India don’t even have a section on Kashmir anymore. It was a place once called the Switzerland of Asia due to its mountains, rivers and forests, giving the inspiration to that great Led Zeppelin song, Kashmir, in the 1970s when rock stars rented palatial boats on Dal Lake in Srinagar and Bollywood filmed dance numbers on the Alpine slopes. Now it is paradise lost.

So instead of investing billions of dollars on improving the infrastructure and livelihood of Kashmiris, or for the other 830 million Indians that live on less than 20 Rupees a day ($0.45), Delhi spent – and officials pocketed – $9 billion on the CWG. An event that – other than negative coverage by the international media in the lead up when a bridge collapsed, a cobra was found in an athlete’s room and so on – has garnered minimal attention worldwide. The Indians themselves seem far more focused on watching cricket matches.

While people starve, the healthcare system privatized, and people forced off their land for new real estate projects, mines and special economic zones, more is being spent on India’s military industrial complex. And Kashmiris, along with other “insurgents”, the Maoists, the Naxalites, keep getting killed by trigger happy soldiers with a licence to kill.¹

In terms of global media coverage, Kashmir is a largely unheard of conflict, especially when placed next to neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan. The bleeding wound that is Kashmir is very much tied into Bush’s and now Obama’s war on Afghanistan, which is spilling over into Pakistan.

Kashmir is part of a regional game, a victim of its geography and religious make up – a mix of Sunni and Shia, the one million Hindu Pandits that lived there forced out over the years due to religious extremism and the perception that the Pandits were overwhelming with the predominantly Hindu national government rather than with Kashmir per se (a controversial government paper has shown that Muslims are under-represented politically and socially disadvantaged in India).

Kashmir has played directly into the ISI’s hands and to countries such as Saudi Arabia keen to export its brand of Islam (Kashmir had a large Sufi following while its Buddhist past also played its part in Kashmiri Islam). The religious dimension is the proverbial spanner in the works to a solution, the hatred so deeply ingrained over the past 63 years between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Hindu majority India. Pakistan is against an independent Kashmir that unites both sides, losing as it would its border and access to China, not to mention a major dent to its pride and the all powerful military that forms the backbone of the Pakistani nation. India’s Hindu populace – which has become far more radical and militant over the past 20 years – would equally be against losing a major part of the Northern provinces, especially to Muslim rule.

Srinagar during curfew

While international observers are calling on the LoC to become an international border, joint institutions to be developed and for the United States to partake in ‘quiet diplomacy’ and utilize its relations with Islamabad and growing alliance – particularly militarily and on nuclear power – with New Delhi, a far more radical solution is called for. One fitting with what India champions itself as, “the world’s largest democracy” – a referendum on what the Kashmiri people want, not Delhi, its puppets or the Kashmiri dynasties that have ruled the valley: independence or autonomy? This is in line with a 1948 UN resolution which called for a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, but Delhi has repeatedly rejected the idea. In the meantime, the extrajudicial killings have to stop, and the AFSPA totally abolished.

As for Pakistan, that Frankenstein country propped up financially by the unlikely trio of China, Saudi Arabia and the US, it must end its 30 year funding of Kashmir-driven militant groups. Indeed, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf admitted earlier this month in London, that the ISI – before his rule, he made clear to point out – set up such groups in the 1980s and early 1990s to attack India. Evidence has also surfaced that the Kashmir-linked, ISI funded militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba was behind the November, 2008 attacks on Mumbai. Pakistan’s support for such groups has fuelled Islamic resistance in the Valley and provides a pretext for the Indian army to shoot unarmed protestors, labelling them terrorists and eyeing all Kashmiris as potential militants. Such an attitude was starkly conveyed to me a few years ago when trekking up in Gulmarg in the Kashmir Valley. I was talking to an Indian soldier, alone at his post overlooking the small town, and he pointed down and said: “All terrorists.”

It is time for the Kashmiris to decide if they want India to stay or to go. The same applies for Azad Kashmir. The Kashmiris should no longer be stuck between the Indian hammer and the Pakistani anvil.

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For an excellent analysis on the state of India’s ‘democracy’ and corporate takeover see Arundhati Roy’s The Trickledown Revolution, Outlook, 20 September, 2010.

Photographs courtesy of Sarwar Bazaz

Dark days for the Gulf

Commentary - Executive magazine

It’s been a long hot summer. Temperatures hit all-time highs and Ramadan demand put power grids under serious strain across the Middle East. Few countries were spared as power outages hit Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sharjah, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. But in those places suffering from power cuts, people seemed largely unaware of the rest of the region's electricity woes.

While Lebanese carried out their daily litany of complaints about blackouts, damning and blasting the government, many were surprised when I told them that Sharjah had such an electricity deficiency that residents were sleeping in air conditioned cars to avoid baking in concrete apartment blocks. It was so hot in the emirate that hospitals were inundated with cases of heat stroke and a construction worker died from heat exhaustion.

In Damascus, residents hot under the collar due to a lack of air conditioning knew of Lebanon's long-term electricity conundrum, but were unaware that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — those rich Gulf countries where many Syrians seek work — were also having blackouts. With an 8 percent annual deficit, the situation was so bad in Saudi Arabia that school children were passing out while taking exams and airplanes were grounded. Kuwait's network hit 99 percent of capacity.

Power shortages in the region's poorer, more corrupt and war ravaged countries — Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon — are daily occurrences and are not unexpected, but why are they happening in the energy-rich Gulf?

The problem is that peak demand occurs every summer at the same time across the region. Populations growing in size and affluence means more air-conditioners — and industrial activity is increasing. All of this, coupled with exceedingly low electricity tariffs and an incredible lack of forward-planning has resulted in a major shortage of megawatts (MW). And without the modern day wonder of air conditioning, the region, particularly the Gulf, is not a place conducive to working or living as the mercury rises.

Thomas Edison, one of the inventors of the light bulb, once said: “I shall make electricity so cheap that only the rich can afford to burn candles.” In much of the Middle East, Edison's saying has been translated as: “We shall make electricity so cheap everyone uses too much of it, and only the rich can afford to run generators.” Lebanon is a case in point, with power “provider” Electricité du Liban to generate $800 million in bills this year, while the Lebanese will spend $1.76 billion on running generators.

But there is hope that such electricity shortages will be abated, with the cuts prompting such furor among the people that governments have been forced to invest in more power production. The Gulf countries are to spend an estimated $200 billion on power plants, Lebanon some $4.7 billion, Iraq up to $10 billion. Everywhere else there are plans for upgrades and new plants. Renewable energy and nuclear power are also in the pipeline, as is the $560 billion Desertec solar power project in North Africa. And if other solar power initiatives get underway in the rest of the Middle East and North Africa, the region will be able to produce up to 470,000 MW of sustainable electricity by 2050, according to research by the German Aerospace Center.

While such initiatives are laudable, practical solutions to the current shortages need to be implemented. It takes around three years to build a conventional power plant, and once output is increased, there is usually a corresponding rise in demand as people use more electricity. It's a vicious cycle.

Before these projects get underway, thinking about how to lower overall consumption across the region should be part of every national power plan. Can we really call a ski slope in a mall in the desert an efficient use of electricity? Do empty office blocks have to be lit up like Christmas trees in the middle of the night? And when the whole of Lebanon lacks electricity, did the Maronite Church have to erect the world’s largest illuminated cross at Qanat Bekish in Mount Lebanon, a 240 foot high construction lit by a staggering 1,800 spotlights?

If temperatures are as high again next year and such wanton waste of electricity continues, power cuts are likely to be worse. In the meantime, higher tariffs to encourage people to use power more wisely would help to ensure more people are sleeping in their houses rather than their cars this time next year.

PAUL COCHRANE is the Middle East correspondent for International News Services

Turkey's clothing and textile sector rebounds

By Paul Cochrane for just-style.com

Turkey's clothing and textile sector has rebounded this year on the back of strong sales to Europe and emerging markets, with clothing exports up 11% to US$9.5bn as of August 2010, and textile exports reaching US$4.1bn, up 23% on 2009.

"Last year was a disastrous year, with clothing exports down 23%. This year we're recovering, exports are up, but 17% below 2008 and 10% below 2007," said Mehmet Kumbaraci, director general of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers Association (TGSD).

Current export figures suggest the TGSD's forecasts for 2010 were relatively solid, with ready-to-wear exports projected at around US$14bn and textile exports at US$6bn. Their predictions, however, had looked rather rose-tinted in the spring.

"We were rather pessimistic at the beginning of the year, but textile exports in August were US$480m, up 10% on the previous month, and US$1.1bn in clothing exports, up 6% on July. I expect for the end of the year exports will be more than US$14bn for clothing, and about US$6bn for textiles.

"All plants are fully occupied, including high quality orders from suppliers in Pakistan, Bangladesh and China," said Kumbaraci. Demand ranges across the industry for all types of garments, he added, with no notably higher demand for any specific items.

Turkey was the only 'top 20' exporter to the European Union (EU) to record gains in the first five months of 2010, up 18.5% in Euro earnings between January and May. The other 19 main exporting countries - including China and India - have seen exports fall, stressed Zafer Çaglayan, Turkey's state minister for foreign commerce, at the launch of Istanbul Fashion Week 2010 in late August.

"Fashion-fast-flexible"

Despite overall textile and garment purchases by the EU falling this year, Turkish manufacturers have increased exports due to what Kumbaraci called the sector's principle of "fashion-fast-flexible."

Lead times have gradually dropped from two months to under four weeks, while the sector's highly skilled workforce, technology and design capabilities have retained Turkey's value-added edge with retailers who are not keen on having too high an inventory in the current economic climate.

This was reflected, for example, in Hugo Boss's decision to enlarge its men's wear factory in Izmir this year, while German men's wear brand Roy Robson has opened a men's wear factory nearby, said Kumbaraci.

"Since we have demand we are urging our members, which are congested with expected and un-expected demand from all over the EU, to invest in more technology and nano-technology, as well as make their own designs," he said.

"We are also encouraging young designers to go to Europe, and for manufacturers to hire young stylish designers that know about the European and American markets."

While the EU accounts for 80% of Turkey's exports, according to the TGSD, domestic clothing sales are also up this year - having fallen 15% in 2009 - and exports to emerging markets are faring well, particularly for Turkish-made brands in Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan and China.

"The Chinese are now wearing more, so local demand is going up there and people want to have goods from abroad. 'Made in Turkey' products are in high demand and we are urging retail chains to open in China, and some are going," said Kumbaraci.

US recovery slow

Exports to the United States, however, have not recovered because import has primarily been for lower-cost garments and textiles than offered by Turkey. Exports are currently valued at US$300m a year compared to US$1.5bn a few years ago.

The TGSD is urging the government to push for Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs) to be established in Turkey which would exempt products from US import taxes, as is the case for QIZs in Egypt and Jordan.

But while the sector is buoyant, it is facing global problems such as the record high cotton prices, and the TGSD is pushing the government to be more flexible with the minimum wage in poorer parts of Turkey to enable the sector to better compete internationally price-wise.

The TGMA's long-term goal is for Turkey to account for 5% of global clothing exports - as in 2005 - at some US$22.5bn to US$25.3bn by 2014, and US$60bn by 2023.

"Next year looks brighter, yet I am not sure if the crisis is 100% over everywhere. We have to be optimistic on one hand and cautious on the other," said Kumbaraci.

Sushi: Lebanon's traditional food?

Royal Wings, the inflight magazine of Royal Jordanian Airlines

By Paul Cochrane in Beirut

There is a growing craze for raw fish in Beirut. Not for the catch of the day fresh from the Mediterranean Sea, but for tuna from Japan and salmon from Scotland. The rising popularity of sushi, Japanese cuisine's most famous export, has taken a firm hold on Beirut's culinary scene, with the number of sushi restaurants going from two a decade ago to around 20 today.

“It's a new trend. Lebanese are curious and going for healthier food. Before sushi was only available in Beirut, but now sushi restaurants are opening outside of the capital,” said Avedis Bonyakrabian, manager of Yabani, one of Beirut's oldest sushi restaurants.

Sushi, patties of vinegared rice topped with varieties of raw fish, and sashimi, slices of raw fish eaten with soy sauce or wasabi (green horseradish), have become so popular that t-shirts are on sale with the slogan “ Sushi: Lebanese traditional food.”

It did not take long for sushi to be culinary accepted following the opening of the country's first sushi restaurant, Le Sushi Bar in 1997. “Raw fish is not unusual in Lebanon like in some places, as people eat raw meat, such as kebbe nayye,” said Charbel Nader, manager of Le Sushi Bar.

The extensive variety of sushi and its offshoots – Yabani and Sushi Bar offer over 60 types of sushi, sashimi and maki – gives diners such a selection it is impossible to try everything at one sitting.

With growing competition as more sushi restaurants open and the market fragments into price segments – ranging from $60 a head to as low as $20 – the higher end establishments are offering a wider range of Japanese cuisine, such as teppanyaki (grilled steak), noodles and gyoza (dumplings).

“In Lebanon the stereotype is that Japanese food is sushi and sashimi, but now more people are familiar with other Japanese foods,” said Bonyakrabian.

With the fish distributed by just two main dealers in Lebanon, what differentiates restaurants is the quality of the cuts. “The attention to detail makes all the difference, in how you slice say a salmon,” said Nader. “And every restaurant is different from the other – it's not like hummus.”

The majority of ingredients are imported from Japan, from the sushi rice to seaweed with the aim of offering genuine Japanese cuisine.

While there has been a degree of “Californication” in the sushi menu to cater to local tastes, it has not gone as far as in the United States where sushi is made sweeter and even cream cheese has become an ingredient. But one core ingredient of Japanese cuisine that is not used is the alcohol sake.

“The Japanese cook nearly everything in sake, but we have to consider people's beliefs here in the Middle East, so warn customers in advance if we do,” said Nader.

Sushi's popularity is set to continue. “When you see 10 year olds asking their parents for sushi, you know the market will become bigger than now,” said Bonyakrabian.

If the craze for sushi develops even further, Nader joked that in the future, “maybe we will eat [Lebanese salad] tabbouleh with chopsticks.”

Photos of Yabani by George Haddad

Immortality - the upcoming Marc Quinn exhibit

Aishti magazine

In the 1990s an art movement developed in Britain that was fresh, unpretentious and accessible to all, a “democratization” of art spearheaded by the Young British Artists, or YBAs. This avant-garde pushed boundaries and the art market, gaining international acclaim. But the YBAs' work has been conspicuously absent from the Middle East. There have been no exhibitions on the work of the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin or Marc Quinn.

Curators Francesca Amfitheatrof and Charles-Henri Lobkowicz came to Beirut in June to scout out a location to exhibit contemporary British art, one YBA at a time. “We are open to the idea of bringing an artist every six months, and for it to be unexpected; not a 9-11pm show, then goodbye. But a really alive exhibit, with crazy parties and musicians,” said Amfitheatrof, who has been the curator for other YBA leaders like Hirst and Emin, as well as Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
The first artist to come to Beirut will be Marc Quinn, best known internationally for his painted bronze and gold sculptures of model Kate Moss in various yoga poses.

“We always wanted to bring something here to Beirut, to show contemporary art and to start with one of the greatest English artists,” said Lobkowicz. “We will bring around 15 pieces, of new work, his Flower Paintings and sculptures. I also want the gold Kate Moss, but the work has not been decided upon yet.”

One of Britain's most successful artists, Quinn's work has endured the financial turmoil, going up in value by some 20 percent. Of the three solid gold Kate Moss sculptures produced, two have been sold for $2 million a piece, while the third could be on sale in Beirut in late September. The sculptures of Moss, described by Quinn as a “mirror of ourselves, a knotted Venus of our age,” are now extremely limited, with the curator duo having the last bronze sculpture available of the model in a yoga position with her legs behind her head.

“Marc is the right artist to show, he is cool, sexy, and fun. Not ultra conceptual, dry or abstract, his work is a bit visceral, that hit's you in the tummy. We want the show to be happy and a little sexy, while being overall rather sensual,” said Amfitheatrof.

Quinn's flower paintings are bright, luscious still-life depictions of hand-picked flowers frozen in ice to capture a perfect bloom's temporal beauty, a romanticism in stopping time. Hyper-realistic, the paintings exude joy. “Everyone that owns a flower painting is happy, it gives them energy, and we want to bring that here,” added Amfitheatrof.

Quinn's other artistic expression in stopping time are his large, round iris canvases that portray the extraordinary colors of the human eye, the only part of the body that doesn't age and the window to the soul. Quinn will bring with him to Beirut a special NASA-designed camera to capture the irises of the exhibition's first 10 customers, which will then be turned into paintings.

“All Quinn's work is about immortality; it is this perfect, idealist world,” said Lobkowicz.

Lebanon's agricultural meltdown

Executive magazine

Mohamad Ajami's 65 bee hives overlook the Litani River Valley, with Jebel el Sheikh looming in the distance and to their immediate right, one of the south's historic landmarks, Beaufort Castle. Last year, Ajami had a bumper honey harvest, generating 650 kilos. He was optimistic that this year would be even better, purchasing extra hives and equipment in anticipation of producing one ton of honey. At $25 for a 900 gram jar, Ajami should have netted over $25,000.

But three months ago he started realizing all was not well. The winds had been continuously blowing from the east, dry, desert winds instead of the westerly winds that provide the right moisture and dew for flora to thrive, and for the bees to pollinate and produce nectar. Ajami also noticed that the bees were not multiplying, meaning he could not artificially swarm the bees and build up the number of colonies to have more hives.

“That was when I realized something wasn't right,” he said. “And while the summer flowers did come there were no forager bees in the hives. Something did not encourage them to generate honey, something – beyond my understanding – that is beyond normal events.”

When it came to harvesting, Ajami's suspicions about a poor harvest were worse than he thought.

“I only generated 50 kilos. It was not a harvest, it is solely for family consumption this year,” he said.

Ajami's experience is not a solitary one. Beekeepers throughout Lebanon have had a bad season, with rough estimates – in lieu of official statistics - of a 50 percent decline in production from an annual average of 200 tons. For Wadih Yazbek, a beekeeper and equipment distributor in Beirut, hardware sales are down 60 to 70 percent, indicative of the overall decline in the honey sector. “Beekeepers aren't needing the extra hives and secondly, with not a lot of honey, keepers are not keen on purchasing new extractors or filters,” said Yazbek.

It is not just honey production that has been affected by the unusual weather patterns Lebanon has witnessed over the past year, of abnormal precipitation in the winter and spring – on average the same quantity but occurring over half the number of days - and a heat wave smack bang in prime harvesting time.

Leaner times

Wheat production is down from 60,000 tons in 2009 to an estimated 35,000 tons this year, according to the Syndicate of Agrifood Traders. The United States Department of Agriculture's Foreign Africulture Service estimates, on the other hand, that Lebanon will produce 100,000 tons of wheat this year, a 23 percent drop from 130,000 tons grown in 2009. Green leafed vegetables have been frazzled by the sun, and fruits are ripening earlier than usual.

“We've a lot of problems this year, particularly with grapes, olives, vegetables, apples, and potatoes,” said Elia Choueiri, head of department of plant protection at the Agriculture Ministry's Lebanese Agricultural Research Institute (LARI) in Tal Amara Station in the Bekaa valley.

In some areas, the olive harvest is down 50 percent, in other regions 30 percent, particularly in areas where olives trees were not irrigated or had supplemental irrigation. At two vineyards in the Bekaa, around 70 percent of the grapes were lost while vineyards at higher elevations have been affected, particularly white grapes.

“The heat wave had an impact on the physiological status of the vine: a rapid increase of alcohol content because of the increased sugar content in grapes over a very short period,” said Carlos Adem, president of the Syndicate of Wines and Spirits. “In general, the year 2010 will not be one of the great vintages, like 2003 for example.”

In the north, trees have brought forth fruit but not enough leaves due to it not getting cold enough over the winter. Japanese plums are down 40 percent. Forest fires have also wrought damage.

“Each plant has a life cycle, but are flowering before time, so the life-cycle is shorter. It's because of climatic change,” said Roula Faris, Middle East representative of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL). “Leafed vegetables and herbs have flowered early due to the temperature, and they are unmarketable.”

While the Bekaa has had temperatures this summer of up to 45 degrees, it is the country's mountainous regions – where a significant amount of produce is grown, whether fruit trees or in greenhouses – that have not been as cool as normal.

“For the first time in Lebanon, even the mountains are hotter than the coast,” added Faris.

On top of all this, phytoplasma diseases have affected stone fruits such as peaches and almonds, killing over 100,000 trees within three years. “This year we noted a new diffusion because of an insect vector. We have tested over 100 insects to find the pathogen, but don't know what kind of insect is spreading the disease,” said Choueiri. “Also, due to the hot weather, the activity of these insects is higher, and we've seen large infections of peach trees in the south and the Bekaa. The diffusion is getting higher year after year.” This year, LARI noted that a further 40,000 trees in the south have been affected by the phytoplasma which, curiously, is only affecting Lebanon and Iran in the region.

Give them bread

The extent of losses in the agricultural sector will not be fully known until harvesting is finished and the data collated. While early indications imply it has been a bad year, it has not been a total disaster, with some regions affected far more than others.

Furthermore, Lebanon has not experienced the drought that neighboring Syria has gone through over the past five years, which has hit agricultural output hard and affected the livelihoods of over one million people. But the reduced yields have come at a time of lower agricultural yields globally, particularly in fire-ravaged Russia, which has driven up global wheat prices, and the disastrous flooding in Pakistan, which has reduced rice cultivation.

Food prices are on an upward curve and Lebanon will be affected, being food import dependent to the tune of some 70 percent of total food consumption, according to the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Indeed, with wheat production in Lebanon down 42 percent, the government banned exports at the beginning of August, preventing a ship being loaded with 4,000 tons at the Beirut port from setting sail.

As Lebanon imports some 400,000 tons of wheat per year, the government has had to go to the international markets to purchase an immediate 50,000 tons, whether for strategic reserves or to regulate domestic wheat and flour prices.

“With wheat prices at today's level, around $320 for a ton, flour should be around $450 per ton or more while the ceiling for bread prices was set [by the government] at a maximum of $320 for a ton of bread,” said Arslan Sinno of Dora Flour Mills and president of the the Syndicate of Agrifood Traders. “Someone must pay the difference, certainly not the millers nor the bakers, so either the consumer by liberalizing the price of bread - which may increase the pack price from LL 1500 ($1) to maybe LL1800 ($1.20) or LL2000 ($1.33) - or the state by subsidizing the wheat by about $200 per ton.”

If the government does up the wheat subsidy it will come at a heavy cost to the state's coffers. The alternative however is higher costs for the Lebanese populace and the chance of rioting, as happened in Beirut in January 2008, when rumors spread that bread prices were to spike.

The new agricultural plan

The agricultural sector as a whole in Lebanon is under invested, which has only compounded the losses due to the topsy-turvy weather this year. According to the Lebanese Farmers Syndicate, agriculture generated some $1.5 billion in gross revenues in 2009, but could generate $3.5 billion if there was sufficient infrastructure investment. Employing 20 to 25 percent of the workforce, according to research at the American University of Beirut, some 50 percent of rural families rely on agro-food production.

Climatic change clearly poses a threat to agriculture's potential and a good swathe of the populace for income generation. But agriculture's importance has finally come to the forefront in politics, with Agriculture Minister Hussein Hajj Hassan releasing this year a four-year plan to address the sector's core problems.

“As of this year, the agriculture ministry has started to be more active,” said Choueiri, adding that LARI has taken on a further 70 staff to improve research. “If you compared 10 years ago to today, our work has improved incredibly.”

Data on the agricultural sector is also being updated, with the last census on the sector released in 1988. FAO is carrying out a new census for the whole country, slated for release in October. “We've a horizontal project for synergy between all the ministries for efficiently developing the agricultural sector to help realize its potential,” said Ali Moumen, FAO representative in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, LARI and the Ministry of Agriculture have implemented a strategy to boost and retain production levels. “We are working on new varieties that support dry climatic conditions, such as introducing new apple varieties at an altitude of 700 meters instead of the old varieties of the Bekaa,” said Choueiri.

Farmers are being given codes for identification purposes in the event of disease, nurseries are being monitored, workshops are being held on growing and pesticide use, and a forecast service by LARI kicked off this year that sends text messages to farmers about disease and climatic change.

Organic agriculture, although very much in its nascence, is also improving, with the number of hectares rising from 250 to 2,465, and organic farmers from 17 to 331 since 2000. “Organic agriculture can reduce global warming as there is lower water usage, it increases biodiversity and improves soil fertility,” said Faris.

Improvements in the sector will certainly help offset climatic change, but for the immediate year ahead, much will depend on future temperatures and whether precipitation is better spread and rainwater retained. “If this year there is again hot weather over the winter period, it will be a big problem,” said Choueiri.

While the outlook is relatively upbeat – yet very much weather dependent – it is agriculturalists that will be feeling the bite this winter. For beekeeper Mohamad Ajami, the income he planned to live off has disappeared. “I'm really concerned about saving the bees for a harvest next year. Adding insult to injury, my whole land was burned as it was so dry and someone must have flicked a lit cigarette,” he said. “My focus was this line of work, but I'll have to do something else to survive the rest of the year.”

BOX - Check the label

Due to the poor harvest, the price of honey is to rise by $6 to $7 on a 900 gram jar, and there will be an increase in imports, said Rami Ollaik, professor of beekeeping at the American University of Beirut. An up-tick in fraud is already underway, with beekeepers buying cheap Chinese or Eastern European honey to pass off as local produce. Indeed, this is a widespread practice in Saudi Arabia, with brands purchasing second country honey and merely bottling it in the kingdom – real Saudi honey sells for $100 a kilo. Beekeepers may also dilute the honey with apple juice or fructose to keep price tags lower.

“If anybody is selling honey at regular prices, there is a big question mark,” said beekeeper Mohamad Ajami. “At an agriculture store here in the south, I told the owner about my poor harvest and he said he could take me somewhere to buy honey to offset my losses, saying many beekeepers are buying from China or elsewhere.”

Such fraud will not work though when it comes to the country's distinctive honey types and the major producers. “Consumers are picky about honey,” said Ollaik. “There are only four big honey producers and they have established consumer confidence for oak, citrus and cedar honey. It has a characteristic taste, so to keep confidence they cannot mess with the quality.”

While climatic conditions have affected honey production, Ollaik said that it has only aggravated an already bad situation, with colony collapse disorder (CCD) present in Lebanon and no financial assistance from the government. “The production process in Lebanon is way below standards. If this was improved, we would increase competitiveness, lower costs and the hives would be less susceptible to changes in the weather,” he said. “But I don't know what's next, it's a challenge.”

What lies beneath

Despite the recent catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the MENA looks to deep water drilling

Executive magazine - Commentary

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is fortunate to be able to tap the majority of its oil onshore and in shallow coastal waters. That's meant a minimal need for deepwater drilling and its associated risks, exemplified by the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that saw some five million barrels of crude spew out of the Macondo well over the course of three months.

But with oil fields maturing in North Africa, oil companies are exploring for black gold at ever-deeper depths in the Mediterranean Sea. In Libya, for example, the colossal Gulf of Sirte basin extends to depths 2,000 meters below sea level — that's some 500 meters deeper than the Macondo well. Deepwater drilling is already underway in the territorial waters of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

Yet it was only when the tarnished British oil company BP announced in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico spill that it is to start exploration off the Libyan coast that Mediterranean states and environmental groups took note of the potential dangers, calling for a moratorium on deepwater drilling. Italy has been the most vocal in calling for a unified strategy for the Mediterranean, what with the Sirte basin only some 500 kilometers from its territory. The Italian foreign minister suggested deepwater drilling should be referred to the Union for the Mediterranean, but this body of European Union and littoral states has essentially been a white elephant thus far, initially beset by problems within the EU and stymied by the Israeli-Arab conflict. The need for a common front on deepwater drilling is a pressing one. An oil spill in the Mediterranean would be a disaster on par if not more calamitous than in the Gulf of Mexico, given the size of the sea and the 21 countries it borders. As the recent BP spill has shown, oil companies and governments are not prepared for when accidents occur.

Libya, according to the United Nations, does not yet have a national contingency plan for an oil spill, while Italian budget cuts have hampered the country's response effectiveness. The rest of the Med is equally ill-equipped to cope with a major oil spill. With so many countries involved a unified front is unlikely, but pressure could be brought to bear on oil companies with deepwater drilling operations to hold off until the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been fully investigated, as the United States and Norway have done. Indeed, BP appears to have caved to pressure, delaying the launch of deepwater operations in Libya.

But deepwater drilling is also in the cards for the Red Sea, and over in the Persian Gulf more than 1,600 offshore wells — albeit in much shallower waters — have been drilled in the past decade, according to Energyfiles. A consolidated stance on offshore drilling for the whole MENA region is clearly needed, which could be spearheaded by the Arab League and then developed in coordination with the EU and other neighbors.

While many want deepwater drilling banned outright, as long as the planet relies on oil-powered economies, we arguably have little choice but to take the oil wherever it may be found. Indeed, over the past 15 years, deepwater drilling has sourced some 60 billion barrels of oil, according to Deutsche Bank, and will account for 10 percent of global oil production between 2008 and 2015.

Deepwater drilling should be viewed in light of the pros and cons. Sure, income is generated, but an oil spill would cost billions to clean up and have untold costs on the fishing industry and the Mediterranean's top earner, tourism. Ten percent of global oil production coming from deepwater drilling is significant, but alternative energies could offset this, such as the solar power projects underway in Morocco.

Countries embarking on offshore drilling, particularly in deep waters, need to weigh up these upsides and downsides. In any event, energy producing states and oil companies should set up a multi-billion dollar contingency fund for any potential spill in the MENA region. With so much money being made off energy, protecting the environment should be considered an operational cost. This makes even more sense when you consider that demands on MENA oil production are set to increase to offset lost output in the oil-drenched Gulf of Mexico.

PAUL COCHRANE is the Middle East correspondent for International News Services

LEBANESE BANKING: It pays to shop around

Lebanese Lira deposit rates 101
Executive magazine

With more than 60 of them jostling for market share, one would expect Lebanese banks to use every trick in the book to lure in customers — including attractive interest rates. Curiously, however, the banks don’t advertise their rates. Instead, offers are made on services, specialized cards, mortgages and loans — the more usual fare that banks provide globally, rather than getting clients into the bank by touting high interest rates.

The lack of publicity is due to clients’ ability to negotiate interest rates based on their financial clout, the competition between banks and the possibility that a bank might change its rates at anytime. “The market is very competitive and banks don’t want to commit to or disclose rates. This is the number one weapon in market share building,” said Freddie Baz, chief financial officer at Bank Audi. “It is about credibility, so if I put interest rates on the door of the branch or in the newspaper — like many European banks do — I am committed to those rates and cannot increase or decrease. The market is very mature when you reach those levels of disclosure.”

Rates hit a new low

Competition is so cut throat that many banks resort to “mystery shopper” techniques, dropping in on other banks posing as potential clients to gauge the interest rates on offer. For actual potential clients, finding out the different interest rates offered requires physically contacting each and every bank.

The most recently released central bank data, from June, puts the weighted average on deposits of Lebanese lira at 5.83 percent, the lowest it has been in 30 years. Interest rates for checking and current accounts have always been much lower, sitting in the low single digits for the past decade, and at 1.24 percent as of June.

Interest on United States dollars has never been historically as high as on the lira, due to government loans being in lira and the perceived safety of the greenback, but has correspondingly dropped from over 4 percent in 2008 when the crisis kicked in, to an all time low of 2.74 percent as of June. Indeed, deposits in dollars have fallen to the lowest level in a decade, to 62.5 percent of total deposits, while the increase in lira deposits accounted for 80 percent of growth this year, according to Bank Audi data.

Banks, however, can offer a rate of their choice: it’s a free market. A rate may be agreed upon with a bank manager, duly paid after a month, but could then drop — without notice to the client — the month after, as the bank alters its interest rates. Other banks may keep that rate for a fixed period of time. In general, the higher the deposit and the less readily accessible an account — blocked versus non-blocked — the greater the interest rate paid out.

As of August the average interest paid was 4 percent for LL5 million ($3,325) to LL10 million ($6,651) at banks sampled by Executive’s secret shopper (chart published but too small to re-publish here).

Few banks offer an attractive interest rate on a non-blocked, readily accessible lira account, with Société Générale de Banque au Liban (SGBL) offering one of the highest at 5 percent. However, with the account costing $12 a month, it is only viable over a certain amount or else the interest earned is offset by paying off the user fee.

With interest rates at the lowest they have been in decades and banks not keen to attract further Lebanese lira deposits, rates offered at the banks are typically less than the rate set by the central bank. They are also correlated with the amount of money a bank has tied up with the state as treasury bonds and the like; the higher the amount loaned to the government, typically the higher the interest rate offered to a client. This is not a fixed rule, as banks also want to raise deposits for lending purposes other than to the government, but is a general guideline.

Preferential rates

At over LL10 million, rates rise, although not always in line with a bank’s lending to the government. For instance, Byblos Bank is a major lender to the government, yet it only offers 3.5 percent on amounts above LL10 million.

BankMed, another leading lender to the state, offers 5 percent on the same amount, while the Bank of Beirut and the Arab Countries (BBAC), which is not a major government lender, offers 4.75 on deposits up to LL30 million.

Fransabank, which holds considerably less of the government debt than Bank Audi, Byblos Bank or BLOM Bank, offers 5.85 percent on deposits ranging from LL1 million to LL10 million.

Over the LL15 million mark ($9,976), rates in certain cases average the central bank’s average rate of deposit, at approximately 6 percent.

Ultimately, it pays to read the small print and do the leg work to get the best rates.

LEBANON BANKING: Goodbye to great rates

The sun sets on the golden age for Lebanese lira deposits

Executive magazine

The high interest historically paid out by Lebanese banks on deposits in Lebanese lira (LL) made the country an attractive location for stashing cash. At its peak, near the end of the civil war in February 1988, the average rate on lira deposits was 20.55 percent, according to data from Banque du Liban (BDL), Lebanon’s central bank. Such double-digit interest was the norm when Lebanon needed as much capital as possible to reconstruct the country. Come the Paris II donor conference in November 2002, lira interest rates dropped below 10 percent, never to return to such highs, as perceived risk was lower. They’ve been more or less in a gradual decline ever since, hitting a three-decade low in June this year when the weighted average interest rate on deposits hit 5.83 percent, according to data provided by BDL.

The cost of competition

As the global financial crisis set in, Lebanon was once again an attractive depositors' haven, with $55 billion flowing into the country from 2007 to the first half of 2010, according to Bank Audi data. Such an abundance of liquidity, combined with the lower rates offered internationally and the heightened confidence in the Lebanese financial system meant interest rates had to tumble. As a result, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance were in a position to demand lower returns on treasury bills (TBs) and certificates of deposit (CDs).

But this represented a challenge for the banks in managing their spreads, particularly when the three-year and five-year TBs and CDs in lira matured, as it would no longer be advantageous to pay out high interest to clients when the banks themselves were no longer receiving such returns.

“On government paper for lira, [interest] was 11.25 percent for [the last] five years, but now it is 6.18 percent, so a huge drop in just a year and a half,” said Walid Raphael, general manager of Banque Libano-Francaise. “If you look at the three-year paper — what most banks are holding with the government — it was at 9.3 percent and is now just below 6 percent, so a 3.30 percent drop. It is the banks that are bearing this reduction in interest. If the market was really efficient the banks would not pay more than they are getting on TBs but much less, yet this is not the case.”

Earlier this year, the Association of Banks in Lebanon decided that the rates banks offered should be lowered, as paying out their current interest was no longer sustainable. But in a free market it is the prerogative of banks as to what rate they offer, even if this costs the institution to do so. “If you are getting 5.3 percent on three-year local treasury bills, why are you paying depositors 5.5 percent?” said Freddie Baz, chief financial officer at Bank Audi. “It is because of idiotic competition to attract clients. Banks are shooting themselves in the foot.”

The banks have to tread carefully though, as a rapid reduction in interest rates on the lira could trigger conversions back to US dollars and threaten the currency’s stability. As Baz remarked, the Lebanese “are not mentally prepared for this,” as depositors have become used to the high rates on the lira. He does, however, advocate a drop of 1 percent on lira interest in 2011.

Decline prompts diversity

Najib Semaan, assistant general manager at the Bank of Beirut, considers the lower interest rates as a boon for the government, the economy and the banks. “Banks are happy to see rates go lower in foreign currency and the lira. Why? Because it will give a boost to the lending on the retail and corporate side, and servicing the debt of the republic will cost less,” he said. “But while it is beneficial to the government to have lower interest rates, I insist we reach a level acceptable to the government and the banks.”

The decline in the interest rates has clearly affected bank’s strategies, placing a greater emphasis on services to attract and retain clients; before it was a case of shopping for the best interest rate on offer. That said, interest rates are still a primary tool to expand the depositor base, hence some rates on offer are on par and even above the returns banks get on TBs and CDs.

For instance, Bank of Beirut is offering an account to new clients that pays 7.20 percent over 15 months. “We want to diversify and increase our client base, and have cross selling, such as to small investors,” said Semaan. “We are not accepting deposits over LL 60 million as we want to diversify and have longer term maturities. The interest rate is a welcome gift to new clientele because otherwise, on a small amount, whatever you pay doesn’t make sense.”

Such a rate is increasingly rare, and overall interest rates are likely to drop in years to come. This could prompt a change in mindset among Lebanese that have lived off the high interest.

“We are coming to normal times, not the extraordinary times of high interest and premiums, which could not last forever,” said Baz. “This could trigger a quicker development of the domestic capital markets as people will be forced to look at other alternatives. Today it is a rentier economy; if I can still get 6 to 8 percent interest, why should I understand the stock market?”

The Coming Contenders

Arab Media & Society, Issue 11, Summer 2010

(Translated in Arabic below English version)



There are 487 free-to-air (FTA) Arabic satellite TV channels broadcasting on Arabsat, Nilesat and Noorsat, in addition to the dozens of ailing terrestrial channels.(1) The region's media landscape has become saturated, as indicated by the drop in the number of new channels going on air, from 104 between August 2007 and March 2009 to just thirteen during the financial year to April 2010.(2)

When it comes to pan-Arab satellite news channels, there has been no major entrant into the broadcasting arena since the Saudi-backed Al Arabiya, part of the MBC Group, went on air in 2003 in response to the Qatari-owned heavyweight, Al Jazeera.

There have certainly been attempts to contend with the two big players, yet the numerous Arabic-language news channels launched by governments in recent years to win hearts and minds, such as by Britain (BBC Arabic), Russia (Russiya Al Yaum), Iran (Al Alam), China (CCTV) and the United States (Al Hurra), have not drawn the same audience figures.

The Arab world's news duopoly is set for a shake-up, and it is to come from two ventures that are connected to one of the world's biggest media organizations, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The common thread is Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, head of Kingdom Holdings Company (KHC) (3), which owns the entertainment group Rotana.


The Rotana tie-up


It has not been good times of late for KHC, with the value of the firm's overall assets slumping 44.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, a $8.26 billion net loss. This year the investment firm reported gains, netting profits of $20 million. But the Rotana Group, which has six TV channels(4), radio stations, a digital media group and is the world’s largest producer of Arabic music (5), has reportedly been struggling in the changing media landscape, a reason analysts believe Prince Alwaleed is mulling the option of selling stakes in the group through an initial public offering (IPO) sometime in the next two years.(6)

It has also been suggested as a factor behind the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation's (LBC) decision to lay off 140 staff earlier this year.(7) LBC-SAT is 85 percent owned by Prince Alwaleed, a stake the mogul has gradually increased since buying into the channel in 2000 with a 49 percent stake.(8) LBC SAT and Rotana merged in 2007.

On the other hand, the shake-up at LBC is attributed to a need to improve content and coverage on LBC, while Prince Alwaleed said that the IPO is to enable Rotana to actively expand its operations in the Middle East.

The group has certainly been upping its offerings, launching channels Fox Movies and Fox Series in the Middle East while signing a $26.7 million licensing content agreement in December 2009 with the Walt Disney Company to air the American entertainment giant's content under a four-year accord.(9)

The launch signaled the biggest entry into the Middle Eastern television landscape by global media powerhouse News Corp. since the company bought Turkey's TGRT TV channel in 2006 and renamed it Fox Turkey in 2007.(10)

It is no surprise that News Corp. - which has a global presence with the Fox network, Star TV Network, Sky News, dozens of newspapers and employs some 64,000 people – should enter into a production sharing agreement with Rotana, given that Prince Alwaleed has 7 percent, or 56 million shares, of News Corp's class B stock and is the largest shareholder outside of the Murdoch family.

But News Corp's move into the Middle East only really began when the Murdoch-led company acquired a 9.09 percent stake in Rotana in February for $70 million. The deal led to speculation that Fox News will launch an Arabic version to compete with pan-Arab news rivals Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, but Prince Alwaleed shot this down.

"I don't visualize a situation whereby Fox News would be broadcasting in Arabic," he said, adding that the partnership would help Fox News and the United States to "understand the Arab world better."(11)

Four months later comes the bombshell that Prince Alwaleed is to launch, independently of Rotana, a 24-hour Arabic news channel “in partnership” with the Fox network. It did not faze Prince Alwaleed that the region is inundated with satellite channels, or that the channel would have to compete with the Qatari and Saudi channels.

"We no longer have a void in the Arab world as it is now heavily occupied," Prince Alwaleed said in a statement issued by the KHC. "Therefore the new news channel is going to become an addition and an alternative for viewers. Our personal aim is to achieve this."(12)


An Arabian Fox?


The channel is going to be headed by the ousted former editor-in-chief of Saudi newspaper Al Watan, Jamal Khashoggi.(13) No time frame has been given for when the channel will launch.

Prince Alwaleed said that the channel's business model will follow those of Fox in the US and Sky News in Britain.

“Fox in the US is gung-ho, flag-waving American, so would an Arabic Fox reflect the attitudes of the Arab street? That would mean anti-American, anti-Israel, even perhaps pro-jihadi,” said an Arabic news editor that wanted anonymity.

The closest model for the new channel could be Fox Turkey, which competes with Turkish news channels NTV, 24, Bloomberg HaberTurk and satellite channel CNN Turk.

“Fox Turkey is pro-government and popularistic. However, the channel depends more on its programming, with game shows and serials being the mainstays, while they have a few spin-off channels, such as Fox Life, FX, and Fox Sports, though most of these are just dubbed into Turkish and only available over satellite or cable. Just as in the US, Fox is more of a popular programming channel with little news focus,” said Jason Nash, an Istanbul-based business analyst.

But while Prince Alwaleed had implied that the channel was linked to Fox, Khashoggi later denied this in an interview with the Saudi-owned website Elaph (based in Britain). “The news channel will [not] work according to the agenda of the media channels owned by Rupert Murdoch... [he] stressed that the channel will be professionally and technically independent.”(14)

Khashoggi said that the channel “will not have a liberal direction as rumored, but it will express the needs of the Saudi and Arab public through a reformative, and developmental line that serves human development away from the futility of preconstructed ideologies and agendas.”

In a further interview, in the Financial Times, Khashoggi said: “It's going to be an interesting channel, pushing for reform, pushing for new ideas in the Arab world. There's a need for a channel with a Saudi mindset that is more aggressive, bolder, and our research shows people want that.”(15) Khashoggi hinted that the channel may be based in one of the media cities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Manama.

Khashoggi's statement that the channel will not follow the agenda of Murdoch's media empire appeared somewhat strange at the time, given Prince Alwaleed and Murdoch's close relations and business ties. However, further news suggested that much has been going on behind closed doors.

In mid-July, British pay-TV company BSkyB - 39 percent owned by News Corp. - announced that it is in talks with a private Abu Dhabi investor to launch a free-to-air Arabic-language news channel under the Sky News brand. According to Abu Dhabi-owned The National, a senior source at Sky told the newspaper that a Saudi backer was also behind the new channel.(16)

Such news has prompted some to speculate that not two, but only one news channel will launch.

As media commentator Keach Hagey put it: “Could these channels actually be one and the same? Prince Alwaleed told Bloomberg TV earlier this year that he wants his channel to be based on the business model of Sky, and Fox is generally an entertainment brand, not a news brand, in the Middle East. For the moment, these appear to be two potentially competing ventures.”(17)

But two new players on the bloc may pave the way for consolidation, given the high costs of bringing out 24 hour news.

The Sky news announcement “brings the number of (major) pan-Arab news channels to at least four and there could be more on the way. That's more than most other news markets can support so we're expecting it to open the way to consolidation,” Rob Beynon, the chief executive of DMA Media Middle East, told The National.(18)

How the channels will be funded is not clear, but to launch a channel will require tens of millions of dollars if the finances of other news channels are anything to go by. When the United States government launched Al Hurra in 2004, the initial budget was around $60 million. Last year, it was $128 million.(19) In the case of Al Jazeera, which has struggled to survive on advertising revenues (largely due to Saudi pressure on advertisers not to cooperate with the channel or face difficulty marketing in the region's biggest consumer market), there are reports that the Qatari government injects some $400 million into the network every year.(20)

Al Arabiya has also been a costly venture, with MBC admitting it has lost money since the channel launched, even though it claims to attract eight times more advertising revenue than Al Jazeera.

“If you take news stations standing on their own, they will definitely have big difficulties in the market,” said Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, Al Arabiya's general manager, to the Financial Times. “If you look at Al Arabiya, without MBC it is a loss; not just a loss, it will be another 10 years before it makes money on its own without the MBC Group.”

Media silence

While the launch of the new channels will no doubt spark much debate in the region whenever it happens, News Corp. buying into Rotana and the announcement of Prince Alwaleed's news channel have not provoked much reaction. Details of the deal and the new channel have been confined to the business pages of newspapers, magazines and online news outlets.

“Rotana is, by Arab world standards, a large media company, and the lack of any attempt at exposing the link between it and a company that has done so much harm to the image of Arabs and largely shaped US public opinion before the war on Iraq, till this day, shows [that journalists have experienced] a level of fear and intimidation,” said Ramzy Baroud, author, syndicated columnist and former Al-Jazeera producer to Arab Media & Society.(21)

“Those daring enough to expose the link might not have the kind of publicity, level of penetration and influence to even make a dent in public opinion in the Arab world. It is surprising that the leftist media is largely muted on this; but once again, it further demonstrates the lack of appreciation of the role of media in society. If this happened in many other parts of the world, it would’ve been a major topic for discussion, as has indeed been the case whenever News Corp made similar moves,” he added.

Indeed, when News Corp. bought Dow Jones, owner of The Wall Street Journal, in 2007, bloggers hastily started typing and opinion editors held back contributions to run a commentary. But when it came to the News Corp.-Rotana deal, it was if it had never happened and was of little significance. With a few notable exceptions, Arabic media has been quiet on the deal, despite its potential ramifications for Middle Eastern media.(22)

Perhaps editors thought that the news channel will not make much of an impact when it launches, given the number of satellite channels already broadcasting in the region. But one might have thought that in the Middle East, of all places, there would have been more than a muted response to the entry of a media empire that banged the drums of war louder than any other organization for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and, moreover, is ardently pro-Zionist.

Such connections were not lost on the independent leftist Lebanese newspaper As-Safir. In a commentary Sateh Noureddine argued that Prince Alwaleed will not be able to counteract News Corp.'s ideological reputation if he says that “American and western media as a whole are anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and pro-Israeli” ... This [tie-up with News Corp.] does not serve the effort to move Saudi society and the Arab and Gulf societies in general towards the atmosphere of liberalism but might rather push them into the arms of Osama Bin Laden.”(23)

The region's media silence in many ways reflects the course Middle Eastern media have taken since their inception, from a nationalist, often pan-Arab bent in the first half of the twentieth century in tune with the post-colonial world, to one primarily government-owned in line with the interests of the state, the elite and in the cases of countries like Lebanon, politically partisan.(24)

Then came private media and commercialization in the 1990s with the rise of satellite and cable TV, such as the Saudi Arabian-owned MBC network, the ART network owned by Saudi Arabian Saleh Abdullah Kamel, and Orbit, a member of the Riyadh-based Mawarid Group, which recently merged with Showtime Arabia, a subsidiary of Kuwaiti investment firm Kipco.(25)

While in the West media ownership has become increasingly consolidated into a few major players, the Middle East's major media outlets have long been in the hands of just a few, and primarily Saudi, players that are connected to the ruling class with an interest in maintaining the status quo.

For instance, Prince Alwaleed has a dominant stake, as noted, in LBC-SAT, and stakes in Lebanese newspapers An Nahar and Al Diyar, while Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan is also a shareholder in LBC and owner of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat.(26)

Such tight media consolidation invariably means that journalists and editors do not want to rock the boat or endanger their future job prospects by critiquing the deal.

“Media tie-ups, buyouts and consolidations have grown to become the modus operandi of today’s media world; it is inherently dangerous as far as diversity of opinions, democracy – or potential democracy – and freedom of expression are concerned,” said Baroud.

“However, in the case of the tie-up between Rotana and News Corp., the extent of the harm is much worse, and more pressing. The Arab world is yet to even appreciate the extent of the problem. It’s very unfortunate. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is more than a media company with an eye on profits. It has political and even ideological dimensions that are hardly hidden. By providing it with that opportunity under the guise of technology transfers, or whatever, Rotana has introduced a menacing new factor to scattered Arab media, which already lack true, authentic identity, and will have little chance standing up to a global giant like News Corp. And the latter doesn’t stop at 9 percent ownership of anything; its model is predicated on constant and rapid expansion. It is hard to imagine a good scenario emerging out of this tie-up,” he added.

Indeed, Prince Alwaleed gave an indication at the announcement of the tie-up that News Corp.'s acquisition is motivated by more than just profit. "This (News Corp) transaction values Rotana at more than $800 million... But the transaction is way, way beyond finance... Rotana does not need to be financed. It has near zero debt," he said.(27)

Murdoch echoed Prince Alwaleed when speaking at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit in March. “To be frank, Rotana does not really need our financing. We are partnering with Rotana for something more ambitious: to tap into Arab talent and ultimately produce original Arab content for markets here and abroad.”(28) The Rotana deal allows News Corp. to up its stake after 18 months to 18.8 percent for another $70 million.

A lot of questions still hang in the air about News Corp.'s entry into the region's media landscape and how the upcoming news channels will fare. There is already talk that the Prince Alwaleed and Sky ventures will be seeking to poach journalists and anchors from Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, while Al Jazeera has indicated that the network will up investment to be more than prepared for new contenders.

Two new channels may of course be beneficial for media freedoms in the region, making it harder for governments to restrict four channels rather than just Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Yet it may not make any difference given the provenance of the channels.

The channels may be used as tools to stoke tensions between Gulf countries – best exemplified by the spats between Saudi Arabia and Qatar over Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya – and over wider geopolitical issues, such as Iran, Iraq and Yemen. And crucially, will these new channels “objectively” cover stories in their headquarters' countries?

Both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have been banned in certain countries for reporting uncomfortable truths, yet do not apply the same journalistic ethos when it comes to airing dirty laundry in their home countries. But knowing which stories should run and others to be avoided is a compromise News Corp. knows how to make, having struck a Faustian bargain with China’s censors and state broadcasters to be able to air in the world's most populous country.(29)

Furthermore, Murdoch and Bin Talal are powerful and influential men; men that could stand up to power but more often than not go along with it, and shape the discourse of power. Murdoch after all had a hotline to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during his time in office, and the two talked three times in nine days in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.(30)

Ultimately, it is too early to tell what these new ventures will entail, but the region's news duopoly seems set for a shake up.


Paul Cochrane is a contributing editor for Arab Media & Society and a freelance journalist based in Beirut since 2002.

Footnotes

1 Satellite TV in the Arab World 2010 Report, April 2010, Arab Advisors Group

2 Ibid

3 Kingdom Holding is 95 percent owned by Prince Alwaleed, the nephew of King Abdullah. The firm most prominent stake is in Citigroup, hotel chain The Four Seasons, Movenpick and News Corp.

4 Cinema (movies), Clip (music clips), Moussica (contemporary music), Resala (religious), Tarab (classic music) and Zaman (classic movies)

5 Faced with widespread piracy in the region, Rotana has lowered the cost of music CDs to retain sales, from 45 Saudi Riyals ($12) to 15 Riyals ($4), the same as a pirated CD. Sales quadrupled. - “Rotana aims to sink pirates with low cost for content”, Keach Hagey, The National, February 3, 2010.

6 Alwaleed moots Rotana Holding IPO”, April 27 2010 - www.ameinfo.com/230862.html

7 "Lebanon's LBC TV Rides Layoffs Wave Ahead of Murdoch Buy-in, Arab Media Market Expansion," Magda Abu Fadil, Huffington Post, November 1, 2009

8 Prince Alwaleed bought the shares off Saudi media mogul Saleh Abdullah Kamel for $100 million. Prince Alwaleed also owns stakes in two daily Lebanese newspapers, 17% of Al Nahar and 25% of Al Diyar.

9 “Rotana signs $26.7m TV deal with Walt Disney,” Bloomberg, 13 December 2009. Rotana has also inked a deal with Yahoo Middle East that will provide free access to multimedia content from Rotana – including music, films, TV, radio and Ramadan features – through Yahoo’s recently launched video channel. “Yahoo tunes in to Rotana for content in Arabic”, Ben Flanagan, The National, July 8, 2010

10 This year strategic partnership was also struck between Fox International Channels and Abu Dhabi's twofour54.

11 Ibid

12 “Saudi tycoon to launch 24-hour news channel,” AFP, July 7, 2010

13 Khashoggi resigned earlier this year after Al Watan published an opinion piece questioning Salafism in Saudi Arabia. The article, written by Saudi poet Ibrahim Al Almaee, was published while Khashoggi was out of the kingdom. Khashoggi later claimed that he did not agree with the points made in the article - “Prince opens channel with Fox,” Ben Flanagan, The National, July 6, 2010

14 “Khashekgi to start a news television channel,” Elaph, July 6, 2010 – translated Mideastwire.com

15 “Tussle of Arab news stations set to heat up,” Andrew England and Robin Wigglesworth, The Financial Times, July 17, 2010

16 'Sky in talks over Abu Dhabi channel', Ben Flanagan, The National, July 14, 2010

17 “Another Arabic news channel?" Politico.com, July 14, 2010 -

http://dyn.politico.com/blogs/onmedia/index.cfm/tag/SaudiArabia

18 “Sky News in talks to launch Arabic TV station in Abu Dhabi,” Ben Flanagan, The National, July 14, 2010

19 “Al Hurra: Propaganda tool or voice of the people?”, John Parnell, Digitial Media Production Middle East, June 23, 2009

20 “Wadah Khanfar on a life and death struggle,” Claire Ferris-Lay, Arabian Business, July 8, 2010. Khanfar is the director-general of Al Jazeera. For more information on Saudi Arabia's pressure on advertisers see Hugh Miles' Al Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel that Is Challenging the West (New York: Grove Press, 2005).

21 Baroud is also the editor of PalestineChronicle.com, and author of “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story.”

22 Fox News did not respond to questions sent by the author.

23 "The Rotana partnership with Murdoch," Sateh Noureddine, As-Safir, February 28, 2010 – translated by Mideastwire.com

24 Iraqi media has also followed this track in the post-2003 environment with dozens of channels launched and the majority connected to political and/or religious parties and governments. See “Iraq: A Diverse Media,” David A. Rousu, Arab Media and Society, Issue 10, Spring 2010 and “The ‘Lebanonization’ of the Iraqi Media: An overview of Iraq’s television landscape,” Paul Cochrane, Transnational Broadcasting Studies, Volume 2, Number 1, 2006.

25 The Orbit-Showtime Arabia merger happened in 2009, to form the “biggest Pay-TV platform” in the region with some 70 entertainment and sports channels - “Showtime Arabia and Orbit merger is complete,” Emma Goma, Arabian Business, August 11, 2009

26 See “Saudi Arabia’s Media Influence,” Paul Cochrane, Arab Media and Society, October, 2007

27 “Saudi Rotana bets on News Corp to lead Arab media,” Reuters, February 23, 2010

28 “The Greatest Resource of Them All”, Rupert Murdoch, Abu Dhabi Media Summit, March 9, 2010

29 “Murdoch’s Dealings in China: It’s Business, and It’s Personal,” Joseph Kahn, The New York Times, June 26, 2007

30 The Independent obtained the details of Murdoch and Blair's phone calls through a Freedom of Information request. “Planet Murdoch: is nothing out of his reach?” Stephen Foley, The Independent, August 2, 2007

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Al-Saha version (translated by Hamad Alisa)

http://sport.alsaha.com/sahat/4/topics/282870

بقلم : بول كوكرين

كاتب بريطاني مستقل مقيم في بيروت منذ عام 2002. يحمل بكالوريوس وماجستير في تاريخ الشرق الأوسط. يكتب بانتظام في صحف عربية وغربية عن الثقافة والسياسة والإعلام والأعمال. يساهم في تحرير فصلية «آرب ميديا آند سوسيتي» (الإعلام والمجتمع العربي) التي نشرت هذا المقال الرائع على موقعها في النت (العدد 11 ، صيف 2010).

ترجمة وتقديم: حمد العيسى
كاتب وباحث سعودي
hamad.alissa@gmail.com

تقديم للمترجم عن ميردوخ ونيوز كورب

هذه ترجمة لمقال تحليلي رائع نشر في دورية «الإعلام والمجتمع العربي» (آرب ميديا آند سوسيتي) التي تنشر على النت. وهو مقال تحليلي هام يناقش قضية إعلامية حساسة وشديدة الأهمية تجاهلها معظم الكتاب العرب بصورة مريبة ما دفع الكاتب «البريطاني» النبيل بول كوكرين لطرحها مجددا حتى يستيقظ كتاب بني يعرب ويناقشوها في ما بقي من صحفهم المستقلة، والقضية المقصودة هي الشراكة بين مجموعة «روتانا» التابعة للأمير السعودي الوليد بن طلال مع مجموعة «شركة نيوز» (نيوز كوربوريشن التي تختصر عادة إلى «نيوز كورب») التابعة للمستثمر الأمريكي/الأسترالي الشهير روبرت ميردوخ.

روبرت ميردوخ مواطن أسترالي مسيحي كاثوليكي و«ليس» يهوديا كما هو شائع خطئا في المخيلة الشعبية العربية، ولكن هذا لا يغير من خطورة الأمر شيء. ولد ميردوخ عام 1931 في أستراليا، وحصل على الجنسية الأمريكية عام 1985 ليتمكن من امتلاك قنوات تلفزيونية في الولايات المتحدة حسب النظام الأمريكي. ورث عن والده صحيفة أسترالية «نيوز ليميتد» عام 1953، ولكنه استطاع توسيعها بنجاح كبير وعبقرية فذة حتى أصبح يملك ثالث أكبر إمبراطورية إعلامية في العالم وهي «نيوز كورب»، حيث يشغل منصب رئيس مجلس الإدارة وكبير الإداريين التنفيذيين، ويتقاضى 30 مليون دولار كمكافأة سنوية نظير هذين المنصبين. وتأتي «نيوز كورب» في المركز الثالث عالميا من ناحية حجم العمليات بعد كل من شركتي «والت ديزني» و«تايم وارنر»، وفي عام 2009 تخطى مجمل دخل مجموعة نيوز كورب 30 بليون دولار وزادت قيمة موجوداتها عن 53 بليون دولار ويعمل فيها 64,000 موظف وموظفة.

ومن المعروف أن ميردوخ داعم كبير وبشكل دائم للتيارات اليمينية المحافظة (الدينية) المتطرفة في الدول التي يمتلك فيها وسائل إعلامية مثل الحزب الجمهوري الأمريكي وحزب المحافظين البريطاني، وله للأسف تصريحات علنية مؤيدة بقوة للصهيونية العالمية معنويا كما أنه لا يبخل بالدعم المالي لأي مرشح لمنصب سياسي مؤيد لتيار اليمين المحافظ وبالضرورة للصهيونية.

إن روبرت ميردوخ شخص إشكالي وخطر من حيث كونه يسعى لفرض إيديولوجيته اليمينية المحافظة والمتطرفة سياسيا على وسائل الإعلام التي يملكها حتى لو أدى ذلك لخرق ميثاق الشرف الصحفي المتمثل بحرية التعبير والتوازن في الطرح الإعلامي المتعارف عليهما عالميا. ويعتبر تطرفه المحافظ - في نظرنا على الأقل -لا يقل سوء إن لم يزد على تطرف بعض الجماعات الإسلامية الراديكالية. وأثناء تنقيح ترجمتي لهذا المقال في مطلع نوفمبر 2010، طالعتنا وكالات الأنباء عن تأسيس جبهة من المؤسسات الإعلامية البريطانية المستقلة لتحتج وتحاول منع صفقة ينوي ميردوخ القيام بها ليشتري باقي أسهم شبكة «بي سكاي بي» التلفزيونية البريطانية التي ليست في حوزته حيث يملك فيها 39%، ليصبح هو مالكها الوحيد، فقد قدمت تلك الجبهة الإعلامية المعارضة له شكوى ضد الصفقة لوزير الإعلام في الحكومة الإئتلافية البريطانية نظرا لما عرف عن ميردوخ من عدم احترام المهنية الإعلامية وفرض توجهاته المحافظة الخطيرة على الرأي العام كما فعلت وتفعل شبكة فوكس الأمريكية خاصة عبر قناة «فوكس نيوز» الشهيرة (كما سنشرح بالأدلة لاحقا) عندما هيئت بل خدعت الرأي العام الأمريكي وجرته لتأييد حربي أفغانستان والعراق.

وحاليا في خريف 2010 تسببت حملة «فوكس نيوز» الهوجاء في عودة الأجواء الماكارثية للساحة السياسية الأمريكية وهزيمة الحزب الديمقراطي المذلة والساحقة في انتخابات التجديد النصفية للكونغرس قبل أسابيع قليلة والتي قادها بنجاح باهر المعلق السياسي التلفزيوني اليميني المورموني المحافظ والمتطرف غلن بيك Glenn Beck في برامج تحليلية يومية على «فوكس نيوز» حيث انتقد الرئيس باراك أوباما بعنف غير مسبوق وردد مرارا أن أوباما أضاع هيبة أمريكا لأنه مصر على سحب الجيش الأمريكي من أفغانستان والعراق. وزعم غلن بيك بصراحة فجة وبدون تقديم أدلة بأن العامل المشترك الذي ربط والد الرئيس أوباما الكيني ووالدته الأمريكية هو – هكذا- «الشيوعية».

وبسبب عدم مهنيته الفاضحة بل واستهتاره بالحريات الصحفية التي كفلتها معظم الدساتير الغربية، قام بعض خصومه من نشطاء الحزب الديمقراطي الأمريكي (مؤسسة «موف أون» MoveOn.org وهي من مؤسسات المجتمع المدني الأمريكي المؤيدة لحرية التعبير ومناهضة التيار المحافظ) بانتاج فيلم وثائقي عنه بعنوان مثير: «الإحتيال: حرب ميردوخ على المهنية الصحافية» Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism ويبلغ طول الفيلم 78 دقيقة وهو من إنتاج عام 2004 للمخرج روبرت غرينوالد، ولم يكلف الفيلم سوى 200,000 دولار فقط لكون معظم المشاركين كانوا متطوعين، لكنه كان مدمرا ومؤلما لميردوخ. وقد شاهدت الفيلم مؤخرا، ووجدت أن عرض بعض ماجاء في الفيلم من معلومات مفيد جدا كتمهيد لمقال السيد بول كوكرين ولاستيعاب خطورة توجهات ميردوخ لمن لا يعرفون الكثير عنه بخلاف الإعتقاد الخاطئ أنه يهودي، وهو ليس كذلك كما أسلفنا.

قدم الفيلم نقدا عنيفا بالأدلة لقناة «فوكس نيوز» اليمينية ومالكها روبرت ميردوخ، مثبتا بالأدلة الوثائقية الدامغة أن ميردوخ يستخدم القناة للترويج لوجهات نظر يمينية محافظة متطرفة تؤدي بل أدت بالفعل إلى حروب. ويشير الفيلم أن هذا التحيز الإيديولوجي اليميني المتطرف يناقض إدعاء القناة الرسمي بأنها ذات سياسة «عادلة ومتوازنة»Fair And Balanced كما تقتضي أصول مهنة الصحافة والإعلام الحر، ولهذا يجادل الفيلم بأن «فوكس نيوز» تقوم بخداع يرقى إلى جريمة من فئة «الاحتيال على المستهلكين» أي المشاهدين العوام والبسطاء الذين لا يفهمون دوافعها الإيديولوجية الخفية بل الخطيرة مما يجعلهم يشجعون أبنائهم وبناتهم للإنضمام للجيش وخوض الحروب لحماية وطنهم من الخطر القادم من الشرق الذي تبالغ بل تكذب في تصويره «فوكس نيوز».

ولكن لسوء الحظ، لم يستطع منتج هذا الفيلم الوثائقي الهام عرضه في صالات السينما بسبب نفوذ وسطوة ميردوخ على الإعلام الأمريكي ويكفي أن نعرف أن مجموعته «نيوز كورب» تضم شركة الإنتاج السينمائي الشهيرة «تونتيث سينشري فوكس» 20th Century Fox التي أنتجت مؤخرا فيلم «آفاتار» الشهير الذي حقق أعلى دخل سينمائي في التاريخ (2.7 بليون دولار)، بل بالكاد استطاع المنتج بيع وتوزيع الفيلم على شكل أقراص «دي في دي»، وبيع على الإنترنت من خلال «أمازون دوت كوم» وأصبح رائجا جدا وحقق لقب «بست سيلر» بعدما نجح منتجه بدهاء في الإعلان عنه على صفحة كاملة في صحيفة «نيويورك تايمز» التي يوجد بين ناشرها اليهودي آرثر أوكس سولزبيرغ وروبرت ميردوخ خلافات كبيرة وتنافس عظيم.

نعود للفيلم الوثائقي الذي يتناول بالريبة والشك دوافع وعواقب النمو العالمي المطرد لمشاريع ميردوخ الإعلامية القائمة على شراء حصص صغيرة في مؤسسات إعلامية صغيرة ناجحة ومن ثم زيادتها تدريجيا حتى يستحوذ عليها بالكامل. ويتم بعد ذلك توحيدها بالدمج مع باقي مؤسساته لكي تسحق منافسيها وبالتالي تروج لإيديولوجيتها اليمينية المحافظة المتطرفة. ويجادل الفيلم بأن سياسة ميردوخ القائمة على توسع تدريجي مدروس لمجموعته يسمح لمستثمر واحد متطرف إيديولوجيا من أن يسيطر على مجموعة إعلامية ضخمة مما يعتبر «بالضرورة» مهددا لحرية التعبير الصحفية في البلد الذي توجد فيه المجموعة. ويرصد الفيلم قائمة إتهامات ضد «فوكس نيوز» على عدة محاور نختار منها الجوانب التالية:

فهناك تغطيتها المتطرفة وطرحها غير المتوازن للآراء المؤيدة والمعارضة للحرب في الشرق الأوسط خلال الفترة التي سبقت ثم تلت حربي أفغانستان والعراق وعدم إتاحة الفرصة لمعارضي الغزو للظهور والحديث بصورة متكافأة مع المؤيدين.

ويؤكد الفيلم عبر مقابلات مع مراسلين سابقين وصور لإيميلات سرية في القناة أن «فوكس نيوز» طلبت منهم أن الكذب بصراحة في تقاريرهم لدعم توجه القناة، وعندما رفضوا الكذب، طردوا من العمل. وعندما قاضوا «فوكس نيوز» في المحكمة مقدمين أدلة على إدعائتهم، قضت المحكمة التي رأسها قاض يميني محافظ أنه لا يوجد قانون حالي يمنع الكذب في برامج الأخبار!!

وأثبت الفيلم أن «فوكس نيوز» أعلنت عن فوز دبليو بوش على آل غور بالإنتخابات المشكوك بصحتها قبل ثبوت ذلك مما أحدث تأثير شعبي غير مباشر على قرار المحكمة العليا التي فصلت في الأمر لصالح دبليو بوش.

وأثبت الفيلم أن إدارة «فوكس نيوز» متمثلة بميردوخ ورئيسها التنفيذي روجر آيلس ، وكلاهما من اليمينيين المحافظين يفرضان أفكارهما المتطرفة على محتوى الشبكة بما يناقض حرية التعبير والطرح المتوازن، وأثبت الفيلم أيضا تدخل ميردوخ وآيلس في تفاصيل التحرير لإختيار أخبار بعينها وصياغتها بما يوافق توجهاتهما اليمينية المتطرفة. وتم عرض صور مذكرات وإيميلات تحمل تلك التوجيهات.

وشرح الفيلم كيف يتم تعليق أو إعفاء كل صحفي أو منتج داخل الشبكة يحيد توجهات ميردوخ وآيلس المحافظة حتى على حساب الحقيقة. وشهد السيد «جون دو بري» وهو مدير مكتب «فوكس نيوز» في ولاية كاليفورنيا أنه فصل من عمله لأنه لم يتحدث بـ «حماس كاف» - كما قيل له لاحقا - أثناء تغطيته ذكرى عيد ميلاد الرئيس الجمهوري المحافظ الراحل رونالد ريغان التي جرت في مكتبة ريغان في كاليفورنيا حيث قال على الهواء بعفوية: «إن المناسبة لم يحضرها سوى بضعة طلاب من الصف الرابع إبتدائي في مدرسة مجاورة».

وبالمثل شهد المحلل العسكري السابق في فوكس نيوز «لاري سي جونسون»، أن «فوكس نيوز» قاطعته وتوقفت عن استضافته بعدما قال في برنامج «الحرب على الإرهاب» بصورة عفوية وتلقائية: «لا يمكن للولايات المتحدة خوض حربين في أفغانستان والعراق في وقت واحد» حيث تم تجاهله تماما في البرامج اللاحقة لأنه كما شرحوا له: «ليس محافظا بدرجة كافية» رغم وجود عقد بينه وبين القناة بأن يكون متفرغا لخدمتها في برامجها الإخبارية دون سواها من القنوات.

ولعل أسوأ ما وجدته في بحثي عن الشخصي عن ميردوخ هو الميكافيلية القذرة التي تمثلت مؤخرا في حادثتين. فحسب مقال نشر في نيويورك تايمز في 26 يونيو 2007، عبرت الحكومة الصينية الشيوعية عن غضبها لمحتوى تتر أو الفاصل المصور لأخبار «بي بي سي» الدولية التي يشاهدها الجمهور الصيني عبر شبكة «ستار تي في» التابعة لميردوخ وهو شريط مصور مدته بالكاد عشر ثوان يحمل لقطات إخبارية قديمة ذات دلالة كبرى ويعرض قبل وبعد وأثناء فواصل نشرات الأخبار، وكان الغضب الصيني يتعلق بمقطع شهير لا يتجاوز طوله ثانيتين يصور طالب جامعي صيني يعترض طريق طابور من أربع دبابات ليمنعها من التقدم لدهس زملائه المتظاهرين أثناء انتفاضة ساحة تيانانمن الشهيرة للمطالبة بالديمقراطية عام 1989. وفور علمه بهذا الإحتجاج، طلب ميردوخ من «بي بي سي» حذف هذا المقطع القصير ذي الثانيتين من فاصل الأخبار.

ولكن «بي بي سي» رفضت تماما «مجرد» فكرة مناقشة الأمر أو المساومة على سياستها التحريرية. وهنا قام ميردوخ بإلغاء عقده مع «بي بي سي» بوقاحة وحذف القناة بالكامل من باقة قنوات شبكة «ستار تي في» الشهيرة لكي لا تزعج الرقيب الصيني، ووصف ميردوخ «بي بي سي» في مؤتمر صحفي بعد تلك الحادثة بالغباء وتعريض المصالح التجارية لزبائنها للخطر.

هذا عن الحدث الأول، أما الحدث الثاني فيتعلق بالفساد المالي. فقد أدرك ميردوخ أهمية دور الصين العالمي القادم كثاني أقوى إقتصاد في العالم بعد أمريكا بعد احتلالها مكان اليابان بجدارة، وقام بالتالي بزيادة تغلغله ونفوذه في الصين عبر عرض التشارك في مشاريع استثمارية رأسمالية مع «أبناء وأحفاد» زعماء الحزب الشيوعي الصيني وكبار وزراء الحكومة. وأشرفت على ترتيب حفلات التعارف والإتفاقات زوجة ميردوخ الثالثة (الصينية «ويندي دينغ» الموظفة السابقة في «نيوز كورب»، فرع هونغ كونغ) بحيث تكفل ميردوخ بكامل رأس مال للمشاريع ويكون دور الشركاء الصينيين الصغار محصورا في جهدهم للحصول على موافقة آبائهم أو أجدادهم في الحزب والحكومة على تنفيذ ثم تشغيل تلك المشاريع.

وتزيد ثروة ميردوخ الشخصية عن 6 بليون دولار بخلاف أسهمه في نيوز كورب. ونلفت النظر أن السيد كوكيرن استعمل 30 هامشا كمراجع ومصادر للمعلومات في المقال ولكننا حذفناها لأنها لا تناسب طبيعة النشر في الصحف مع العلم أننا نقلنا أهم معلومات تلك الهوامش لتصبح في صلب المقال. انتهى تقديم المترجم ويليه مقال بول كوكرين:


«الوليد مع ميردوخ»
شراكة خطرة… وصمت مريب

هناك 487 قناة فضائية عربية تبث عبر «عربسات» و«نايل سات» و«نورسات»، بالإضافة إلى العشرات من القنوات الأرضية المتهالكة. المشهد الإعلامي في المنطقة العربية أصبح متشبعا، بدليل انخفاض «المعدل السنوي» لظهور قنوات فضائية جديدة من 104 قناة جديدة قبل سنتين (في الفترة بين أغسطس 2007 إلى مارس 2009) إلى 13 قناة فقط حاليا (خلال السنة المالية الحالية عام 2010).

وفيما يتعلق بالقنوات الفضائية «الإخبارية» العربية، لم يكن هناك أي مشارك رئيسي جديد في الساحة منذ بدء بث قناة «العربية» المدعومة من السعودية في عام 2003 ، وهي جزء من مجموعة «إم بي سي» السعودية، وجاءت كرد فعل للقناة ذات الوزن الثقيل «الجزيرة» التابعة لقطر.

كانت هناك بالتأكيد محاولات لمنافسة هاتين القناتين الرئيستن، ومع ذلك فإن العديد من القنوات الإخبارية العربية التي أطلقتها حكومات أجنبية في السنوات الأخيرة لكسب القلوب والعقول العربية ، مثل بريطانيا («بي بي سي» عربي) ، روسيا («روسيا اليوم») ، وإيران (قناة «العالم») ، والصين («سي سي تي في») ، والولايات المتحدة (الحرة) لم تجذب جميعها أرقام مشاهدين مشابهة لـ «الجزيرة» و«العربية».

ولكن هذا الإحتكار الثنائي لـ «أخبار» العالم العربي من قبل «العربية» و«الجزيرة» يستعد لهزة عنيفة، وهي قادمة من هيئة لها علاقة بواحدة من أكبر المجموعات الإعلامية في العالم: «نيوز كورب» التابعة لروبرت ميردوخ، والرابط المشترك معها هو الأمير الوليد بن طلال من المملكة العربية السعودية ، رئيس «شركة المملكة القابضة» التي تملك «مجموعة روتانا الإعلامية».

الإرتباط مع روتانا

مؤخرا عانت «شركة المملكة القابضة» من أوقات عصيبة حيث انخفضت قيمة أصول الشركة الإجمالية 44.4% في الربع الرابع من عام 2008 ، مما يعني صافي خسارة يعادل8.2 بليون دولار. وهذا العام حسبما ذكر تقرير، حصدت شركة المملكة أرباحا تقدر بـ 20 مليون دولار. ولكن مجموعة روتانا ، التي تضم ستة محطات تلفزيونية وأربع محطات إذاعية، ومجموعة وسائط رقمية ، وتعتبر أكبر منتج في العالم للموسيقى العربية، يبدو أنها بحسب ما ورد تكافح بقوة لتبقى حاضرة في المشهد الإعلامي المتغير وهو السبب - يقول محللون - الذي جعل الأمير الوليد بن طلال يدرس خيار بيع حصص في المجموعة من خلال طرح عام أولي. وبحسب مصادر، تسببت قرصنة الموسيقى بمصاعب كبرى لروتانا ما أجبرها على تخفيض قيمة «سي دي» الموسيقى الأصلي من 45 ريال (12 دولار) إلى 15 ريال (4 دولار) وهو نفس سعر «السي دي» المقرصن للمحافظة على موقعها في السوق وبالفعل زادت وتضاعفت المبيعات كثيرا ولكنها لم تحل أزمتها المالية.

وقد قيل أيضا أن تلك الصعوبات الإقتصادية كانت عاملا رئيسا وراء قرار قناة «إل بي سي» اللبنانية تسريح 140 موظفا في وقت سابق من هذا العام. ومن المعروف أن الأمير الوليد يملك 85% من «إل بي سي-سات» LBC-SAT ، وهي حصة قد ازدادت تدريجيا منذ شرائه حصة أولية في القناة تبلغ 49% في عام 2000. ثم اندمجت «إل بي سي-سات» مع روتانا في عام 2007.

من ناحية أخرى، تم تبرير الهزة في «إل بي سي» بالحاجة إلى تحسين المحتوى والتغطية على القناة ، في حين أن الأمير الوليد بن طلال قال ان الاكتتاب هدفه تمكين روتانا من توسيع عملياتها في الشرق الأوسط.

المجموعة بالتأكيد قامت بتكثيف نشاطها وإطلاق قنوات جديدة مثل «فوكس-أفلام» و«فوكس-مسلسلات» كما قامت في ديسمبر 2009 بالتوقيع على عقد بقيمة 26.7 مليون دولار للحصول على ترخيص من شركة «والت ديزني» العملاقة لبث برامجها بموجب إتفاق لمدة أربع سنوات.
الإتفاق مع «نيوز كورب» يعتبر أكبر دخول تلفزيوني في الشرق الأوسط لميردوخ منذ قيامه بشراء قناة «تي جي آر تي» التركية عام 2006 ومن ثم تسميتها «فوكس-تركيا» في 2007.

وبالنظر إلى أن الأمير الوليد بن طلال يملك نسبة تقدر بـ 7% من «نيوز كورب» (56 مليون سهم فئة بي) ويعتبر أكبر مساهم فيها من خارج أسرة ميردوخ، فليس من المستغرب أن تدخل نيوز كورب في شراكة مع روتانا. مع العلم أن «نيوز كورب» يعمل فيها 64,000 موظف وتملك شبكة فوكس وشبكة ستار وسكاي نيوز وعشرات الصحف الغربية.

لكن تحرك «نيوز كورب» في الشرق الأوسط بدأ بالفعل عندما استحوذت شركة ميردوخ على حصة 9.09 % في المئة في شركة روتانا في فبراير بمبلغ 70 مليون دولار. وأدت تلك الصفقة إلى تكهنات بأن شبكة «فوكس نيوز» ستطلق نسخة عربية لمنافسة «العربية» و«الجزيرة» ، ولكن الأمير الوليد بن طلال قتل هذه التكهنات قائلا: «أنا لا تصور وضعا تقوم فيه «فوكس نيوز» بالبث باللغة العربية»، وأضاف الوليد: «إن هذه الشراكة ستساعد «فوكس نيوز» والولايات المتحدة لفهم العالم العربي بصورة أفضل».

وبعد أربعة أشهر أتت قنبلة إعلامية مفاجئة عبر خبر بأن الأمير الوليد بن طلال سوف يطلق، بشكل مستقل عن مجموعة روتانا ، قناة إخبارية عربية على مدار الساعة بشراكة مع «فوكس نيوز». ولم يزعج الأمير الوليد بن طلال كون الفضاء العربي مزدحم بفضائيات كثيرة، أو أن القناة يجب أن تنافس قنوات عتيده قطرية وسعودية.

وقال الأمير في بيان صادر عن شركة المملكة القابضة: «لم يعد لدينا متسع كبير في الفضاء العربي لكونه محتل بقنوات فضائيات كثيرة، ولذلك فإن القناة الاخبارية الجديدة ستصبح إضافة وبديلا للمشاهدين ، وهدفنا الشخصي هو تحقيق ذلك».

هل ستنطلق «فوكس عربية»؟

القناة الجديدة ستكون برئاسة رئيس التحرير جريدة الوطن السعودية السابق والمخلوع جمال خاشقجي. ولكن لم يتم تحديد أي إطار زمني لإنطلاق القناة.

وقال الأمير الوليد بن طلال ضمنيا أن نموذج عمل القناة سيتبع نموذج «فوكس» في الولايات المتحدة و«سكاي نيوز» في بريطانيا.

وعلق خبير إعلامي عربي طلب عدم ذكر اسمه على القناة الجديدة قائلا: «شبكة «فوكس الأمريكية» تعتبر شبكة أمريكية وطنية شوفينة متحمسة ومتعصبة لسياسات الولايات المتحدة التوسعية، فهل ستقوم «فوكس عربية» بعكس نبض ومواقف الشارع العربي؟» وأضاف الخبير: «إن ذلك يعني بالتأكيد وجوب أن تكون مناهضة للولايات المتحدة ، ومعادية لإسرائيل، وربما حتى مؤيدة للجهاد ضدهما».

أقرب نموذج لقناة فوكس الجديدة ستكون «فوكس تركيا» التي تنافس القنوات الإخبارية التركية «إن تي في» ، و«24» ، و«بلومبرغ» و«هابر ترك»، و«سي إن إن- تركيا».

وكما قال جيسون ناش ، وهو محلل أعمال مقره إسطنبول: ««فوكس-تركيا» مؤيدة تماما للحكومة وشعبوية. ومع ذلك ، تعتمد القناة أكثر على برامجها الخاصة، مع برامج الألعاب والمسلسلات التي تعتبر دعائم أساسية مع وجود قليل من القنوات الفرعية مثل: «فوكس-لايف»، و«إف إكس»، و«فوكس-سبورت» ، على الرغم من كونها برامج منقولة ومدبلجة بالتركية في الغالب ومتوفرة عبر الكابل فقط . وكما هو الحال في الولايات المتحدة ، قنوات شبكة «فوكس» هي في الغالب ترفيهية وللبرامج الشعبية مع تركيز قليل على الأخبار».

لكن في حين ألمح الأمير الوليد بن طلال «ضمنيا» بارتباط القناة الجديدة مع فوكس ، نفى خاشقجي تماما في وقت لاحق هذا الرابط في مقابلة مع موقع إيلاف السعودي قائلا: «القناة الاخبارية «لن» تعمل بموجب سياسة وأجندة القنوات التي يملكها روبرت ميردوخ». وأكد خاشقجي أن القناة الجديدة «ستكون مستقلة فنيا ومهنيا تماما».

وقال خاشقجي إن القناة «لن يكون لها إتجاه ليبرالي كما يشاع ، لكنها ستعبر عن احتياجات الشعب السعودي والعربي من خلال توجه إصلاحي وتطويري يخدم التنمية البشرية العربية بعيدا عن عقم الإيديولوجيات والأجندات المسبقة».

وفي مقابلة أخرى في صحيفة فاينانشال تايمز البريطانية، قال خاشقجي : إنها ستكون قناة مثيرة للاهتمام ، وستدفع نحو الإصلاح و«الأفكار الجديدة» في العالم العربي. هناك حاجة إلى قناة ذات عقلية سعودية تكون أكثر جزما وجرأة ، وتبين لنا بعد البحث والدراسة أن الناس يريدونها». (تعليق المترجم: هذا اعتراف هام وخطير وغير مباشر من خاشقجي بفشل قناة «العربية» التابعة للسعودية. انتهى تعليق المترجم) وألمح خاشقجي أن القناة يمكن أن تستقر في واحدة من المدن الإعلامية في دبي أو أبو ظبي أو المنامة.

وبدا تصريح خاشقجي بأن القناة الجديدة لن تتبع سياسة أو أجندة امبراطورية ميردوخ الإعلامية مناقضا لتصريح الأمير الوليد الضمني وغريبا بعض الشيء في ذلك الوقت إذا عرفنا عن العلاقة الوطيدة بين الأمير الوليد بن طلال وميردوخ. ومع ذلك ، فإن هذا التخبط في التصريحات يدل على أن هناك الكثير مما حدث ويحدث وسيحدث وراء الأبواب المغلقة بعد الإعلان عن نية الوليد إطلاق القناة الجديدة.

في منتصف يوليو، أعلنت شبكة «بي سكاي بي» البريطانية (التي تملك شركة نيوز كورب 39% منها) أنها تجري محادثات مع مستثمر من أبو ظبي لإطلاق قناة إخبارية عربية تحت العلامة التجارية لـ«سكاي نيوز». وبحسب جريدة «ذا ناشينال» الأماراتية فإن هناك مستثمر سعودي يساند هذه القناة الجديدة. ولذلك، دفع هذا الخبر البعض الى التكهن بأنه لن يكون هناك قناتين بل واحدة.

وكما يشرح الخبير الإعلامي كيش هايغي: «هل يمكن فعلا أن تكون هاتين القناتين واحدة ونفس الشيء؟ الأمير الوليد بن طلال أخبر قناة «بلومبرج» التلفزيونية في وقت سابق هذا العام انه يريد أن تستند قناته على نموذج عمل «سكاي نيوز» في الشرق الأوسط، وشبكة فوكس تعتبر عموما علامة لقناة ترفيهية، وليست علامة لقناة إخبارية ولهذه اللحظة، يبدو أن هناك مشروعين يحتمل أن يكونا متنافسين»

ولكن لاعبين اثنين جديدين قد يمهدان الطريق لتوحيدهما ودمجهما نظرا لارتفاع تكاليف بث أخبار 24 ساعة.
وقال روب بينون المحلل الإعلامي المعروف في تصريح لجريدة «ذا ناشينال» الإماراتية: إن «إعلان سكاي نيوز السالف يرفع عدد قنوات الأخبار العربية الرئيسة إلى ما لا يقل عن أربعة ويمكن أن يكون هناك المزيد على الطريق. وهذا أكثر من طاقة سوق الأخبار في المنطقة (التي يمكن القنوات من العمل بدون أن تنهار) ولذلك نحن نتوقع أن يمهد هذا الطريق أمام توحيد ودمج بعضها».

لكن ليس واضحا كيف سيتم تمويل القنوات الجديدة، فإطلاق قناة يتطلب عشرات الملايين من الدولارات. وعندما أطلقت حكومة الولايات المتحدة قناة الحرة في عام 2004 ، كانت الميزانية الأولية نحو 60 مليون دولار. وفي العام الماضي بلغت ميزانيتها 128 مليون دولار. وفي حالة قناة «الجزيرة» ، التي كافحت من أجل النجاة لتدهور عائدات الإعلانات بسبب الضغط السعودي على المعلنين بعدم التعاون مع القناة. وهناك تقارير تفيد بأن الحكومة القطرية قد تضخ قريبا نحو 400 مليون دولار في ميزانية قناة الجزيرة لتواصل العمل بقوة خاصة بعد إطلاق قناة الوليد الجديدة لتكون الجزيرة في القمة بين المتنافسين على الفضاء الإخباري العربي، وبدون الإعتماد على أية الإعلانات.

وكذلك تعتبر قناة «العربية» مشروعا مكلفا، مع اعتراف «إم بي سي» أنها تخسر منذ إطلاق قناة العربية، على الرغم من أن العربية تدعي جذبها إعلانات أكثر من الجزيرة بثمانية أضعاف.

وكما قال عبد الرحمن الراشد مدير قناة «العربية» لصحيفة فاينانشال تايمز: «إذا كنت تريد أن تعتمد قناة إخبارية على نفسها لتواصل العمل، فهذا يعني بالتأكيد أنها ستواجه صعوبات كبيرة في السوق». وأضاف الراشد: «اذا نظرتم الى قناة «العربية»، فإنها بدون دعم «إم بي سي» تعتبر خاسرة، وليس مجرد أية خسارة، بل يجب أن ننتظر 10 سنوات أخرى قبل أن تربح شيئا بنفسها».

صمت مريب للصحافة!!!

في حين أن إطلاق القناتين الجديدتين سوف يشعل – بدون شك- جدل كبير في المنطقة عندما تبدآن العمل حول توجهات تلك القناتين، فإن خبر شراء نيوز كورب حصص في روتانا، ومن ثم إعلان قرب إطلاق قناة إخبارية للأمير الوليد لم يثر رد فعل حسب ما يستحقه هذا الحدث الهام. تفاصيل الصفقة والقناة الجديدة نشرت في الصفحات «الإقتصادية» للصحف والمجلات والمواقع الإخبارية على الانترنت.

وكما يقول الكاتب والمؤلف الفلسطيني الأمريكي الدكتور رمزي بارود «تعتبر روتانا، وفقا لمعايير العالم العربي ، شركة إعلامية عملاقة ، وعدم وجود أي محاولة لتحليل العلاقة بينها وبين إمبراطورية ميردوخ الإعلامية التي ألحقت بصورة العرب الكثير من الضرر وساهمت في تحريض وتشكيل رأي عام أمريكي مساند للحرب على أفغانستان والعراق، وما زالت تواصل نفس السياسة الإعلامية المناهضة للعرب حتى يومنا هذا، وهذا يدل بوضوح أن الصحفيين العرب خائفين من مجرد الخوض في هذا الموضوع».

ويضيف بارود: «وحتى هؤلاء الذين يملكون بعض الجرأة لنقد هذه الشراكة الخطرة قد لا يملكون حضورا قويا ولا مستوى من التغلغل والنفوذ لتوعية الناس عن خطورة دخول ميردوخ الفضاء العربي وتشكيل رأي عام مناهض لهذا الحدث الكارثي. ومن المدهش والمريب صمت حتى بعض وسائل الإعلام اليسارية والقومية. ولكن مرة أخرى، فإن كل هذا يوضح عدم وجود تقدير لدور وسائل الإعلام في صياغة وتكوين فكر المجتمع. ولو كانت هذه الشراكة حدثت في أجزاء أخرى كثيرة من العالم، فإنها ستصبح موضوعا رئيسا للمناقشة والجدل، كما كان الحال في الواقع كلما عملت «نيوز كورب» تحركات مماثلة سابقا».

في الواقع، عندما اشترت «نيوز كورب» شركة «داو جونز» ، صاحبة صحيفة «وول ستريت جورنال» في 2007 ، بدأ مدونون الكتابة على عجل وكذلك فعل كتاب الرأي للتحذير من خطورة ميردوخ على المهنية الإعلامية. ولكن عندما وصل الأمر إلى اتفاق شركة روتانا مع نيوز كورب مر الأمر بسلام كأنه لم يحدث ولم يعلن عنه وكأنه أمر ثانوي قليل الأهمية. وفيما عدا استثناءات محترمة وقليلة ، فإن وسائل الاعلام العربية كانت هادئة بخصوص هذه الصفقة ، على الرغم من انعكاساتها الخطيرة المحتملة على الإعلام في منطقة الشرق الأوسط.

ربما يعتقد الصحفيون أن القناة الاخبارية الجديدة لن يكون لها تأثير كبير عندما تنطلق نظرا للعدد الكبير من القنوات الفضائية التي تبث إرسالها بالفعل في المنطقة. ولكن ربما يحق لمراقب مثلي يعتقد أن في الشرق الأوسط تحديدا، بخلاف جميع الأماكن ، كان من الواجب حدوث رد فعل أكثر من الصمت المريب لدخول إمبراطورية ميردوخ الإعلامية التي كان لها الدور الأبرز في قرع طبول الحرب لغزو أفغانستان والعراق أكثر من أية مؤسسة إعلامية أخرى، وعلاوة على ذلك ، تؤيد الصهيونية بحماس بالغ.

مثل هذه المعلومات المعروفة ليست عصية أو مجهولة على الصحف المستقلة اليسارية اللبنانية مثل «السفير». ففي تعليق هام على الصفقة للكاتب السياسي اللبناني البارز «ساطع نور الدين» جادل نور الدين بأن الامير الوليد بن طلال «لن يكون قادرا على مواجهة ومقاومة أيديولوجية «نيوز كورب» الشهيرة والعتيدة إذا كان يقول بنفسه إن وسائل الإعلام الأمريكية والغربية ككل ضد العرب ، وضد المسلمين ، ومؤيدة لإسرائيل». ولذلك، هذا التعاون مع نيوز كورب لا يخدم الجهود المبذولة لتحريك المجتمع السعودي والمجتمعات العربية والخليج بصفة عامة نحو جو من الليبرالية ، ولكنه بدلا من ذلك قد يدفع بالمزيد منهم إلى أحضان أسامة بن لادن».

الصمت الإعلامي في المنطقة يعكس في العديد من الطرق مسار إعلام الشرق الأوسط منذ نشأته: من طابع قومي عروبي في النصف الأول من القرن العشرين في تناغم مع عالم «ما بعد الاستعمار» ، إلى طابع حكومي يخدم مصالح الدولة والنخبة الحزبية في حالات بلدان مثل لبنان. ثم جاءت وسائل الإعلام الخاصة والتجارية في التسعينيات مع ظهور الفضائيات والكابلات ، مثل شبكة «إم بي سي» السعودية ، وشبكة «آي آر تي» التي يملكها السعودي صالح عبد الله كامل ، وشبكة «أوربت» ، وهي عضو في مجموعة موارد السعودية والتي اندمجت مؤخرا مع شبكة شوتايم الكويتية.

وبينما وسائل الاعلام الغربية أصبحت تندمج بصورة متزايدة لكي يصبح هناك لاعبين كبار قليلين، فإن الهيئات الإعلامية الكبرى في منطقة الشرق الأوسط كانت منذ وقت طويل محتكرة عند قلة معظمها سعودية وتربطها علاقات وثيقة مع العائلة الحاكمة، والتي لها مصلحة في الحفاظ على واستمرارية الوضع الراهن.

على سبيل المثال، الأمير الوليد بن طلال يسيطر على حصة في «إل بي سي-سات» كما سلف، ويملك حصصا في صحف لبنانية كالنهار والديار ، في حين أن الأمير خالد بن سلطان هو أيضا مساهم في «إل بي سي» وصاحب جريدة «الحياة» العربية الدولية.

مثل هذا الوضع من توحيد ملكية وسائل الاعلام يعني دائما أن الصحفيين والمحررين لا يستطيعون أن يكتبوا بصراحة غير مألوفة حتى لا تتعرض فرص عملهم للخطر في المستقبل لو نقدوا تلك الصفقة.

ويؤكد بارود إن «تحالف وسائل الإعلام والإستحواذ عليها بالشراء واندماجها نما بسرعة حتى أصبح الطريقة المعتادة لعمل وسائل الإعلام العالمية اليوم ، وهذا تطور خطير في حد ذاته لأنه يحد من تنوع الآراء ، والديمقراطية - أو الديمقراطية المحتملة - وحرية التعبير» ويضيف بارود: «ومع ذلك ، في حالة تحالف روتانا ونيوز كورب ، فإن حجم الضرر أسوأ من ذلك بكثير ، وأشد إلحاحا للنقاش والنقد. فالعالم العربي لم يفطن حتى الآن بالصورة المطلوبة ليحس بمدى هذه المشكلة الخطرة. إنه أمر مؤسف جدا. نيوز كورب التابعة لروبرت ميردوخ أكثر من شركة إعلامية تركز على الربح فقط. فهي تتميز عن غيرها بأجندة وأيديولوجية واضحة لا يمكن حجبها. وبإتاحة هذه الفرصة لها تحت ستار نقل التكنولوجيا ، أو أي عذر كان، فإن روتانا تكون قد أدخلت لاعبا جديدا وخطيرا إلى فضاء الإعلام العربي، الذي تفتقر قنواته بالفعل إلى هوية أصيلة ولا يمكنها الوقوف في وجه عملاق عالمي مثل نيوز كورب، وهذا الأخير لا يتوقف عند حدود 9% من أسهم أي هيئة إعلامية يرتبط بها، لأن نموذجها المسيطر يعتمد على التوسع المستمر والسريع. ومن الصعب تخيل بزوغ أي سيناريو جيد نتيجة تحالف روتانا مع نيوز كورب» انتهى كلام بارود.

في الواقع ، أشار الأمير الوليد بن طلال في بيانه الأولي عن هذا التحالف أن دوافع شراء نيوز كورب حصص في روتانا له حافز أكبر من مجرد الأرباح فقط. الأمير قال: «هذه الصفقة مع «نيوز كورب» قيّمت روتانا بمبلغ أكثر من 800 مليون دولار. ولكن الصفقة هي أكثر بكثير من مجرد تمويل إضافي لروتانا، لأن روتانا لا تحتاج إلى تمويل ، ولها ديون تقارب الصفر».

وأكد ميردوخ تصريح الأمير الوليد بن طلال عندما كان يتحدث في مؤتمر القمة الإعلامية في أبو ظبي: «لكي أكون صريحا ، روتانا لا تحتاج حقا تمويلنا. نحن نتشارك مع روتانا لأجل شيء أكثر طموحا: الاستفادة من المواهب العربية لكي نقدم منتوجات عربية مبتكرة للأسواق هنا وفي الخارج». الصفقة مع روتانا تسمح لـ «نيوز كورب» رفع حصتها بعد 18 شهرا إلى 18.8% أي ما يعادل 70 مليون دولار إضافية.

هناك الكثير من الأسئلة لا تزال إجاباتها غامضة حول دخول «نيوز كورب» إلى المشهد الإعلامي في المنطقة وكيفية عمل القنوات الإخبارية القادمة. هناك بالفعل حديث أن مشروعات الأمير الوليد بن طلال سوف تسعى لاستمالة بعض المذيعين وكبار مقدمي الأخبار من قناة «الجزيرة» وقناة «العربية» ، في حين أن قناة الجزيرة قد أشارت إلى أن الشبكة سوف تزيد في ميزانيتها لتكون أكثر من مستعدة للمنافسين الجديدين القادمين.
وبالطبع قد يكون ظهور قناتين جديدتين مفيدا للحريات الإعلامية في المنطقة ، مما يجعل من الصعب على الحكومات السيطرة على أربع قنوات فقط بدلا من قناة الجزيرة وقناة العربية. ولكن رغم ذلك، قد لا يحدث أي فارق بالنظر إلى أصل وملكية تلك القنوات.

ويمكن استخدام القنوات كأدوات لتأجيج التوتر بين دول الخليج — وأفضل دليل المشاحنات السابقة بين السعودية وقطر على قناة الجزيرة وقناة العربية — وعلى نطاق أوسع حول قضايا جيوسياسية ، مثل ايران والعراق واليمن. ولكن السؤال الأهم من ذلك: «هل ستتمكن هذه القنوات الجديدة من تقديم تغطية “موضوعية” لأخبار الدول التي توجد فيها مقراتها؟»

لقد تم حظر كل من قناة الجزيرة وقناة العربية في بعض البلدان لتقديمها حقائق غير مريحة للبعض. ولكنهما لا تطبقان نفس المعايير المهنية عند تغطية بلديهما. ولكن معرفة الأخبار المقبولة من غير المقبولة يعتبر مساومة مهنية تتقنها “نيوز كورب” بعدما نجحت في إبرام صفقة سحرية مع الرقابة الصينية لتمنح شبكته «ستار تي في» حق البث بدون مضايقات في أكبر دولة في العالم رغم وجود قانون يمنع بث قنوات غير حكومية، (ولكن ميردوخ حاورهم واستجاب لأهم تحفظ لديهم وحذف قناة «بي بي سي» من شبكته حتى لا تزعجهم مستقبلا).

وعلاوة على ذلك ، ميردوخ والوليد بن طلال رجلين قويين ومؤثرين، ويمكنهما مواجهة السلطة ولكن في كثير من الأحيان يفضلان التصالح معها وتشكيل خطابها. ميردوخ على أية حال كان لديه – كما قال- خط ساخن مباشر مع رئيس الوزراء البريطاني السابق توني بلير خلال الفترة التي قضاها في منصبه، وتحدثا معا ثلاث مرات في تسعة أيام في الفترة التي سبقت غزو العراق.

في نهاية المطاف، ربما من السابق لأوانه التنبؤ بدقة بماهية هذين المشروعين الجديدين. ولكن المؤكد أن الإحتكار الثنائي لقناتي العربية والجزيرة لأخبار المنطقة سوف يهتز بقوة قريبا.

المصدر / مجلة رؤية - الوليــد بن طلال وميردوخ: شراكـة خطرة وصمت مريب ..!