خطة بحث لمن يجد في نفسه القدرة
The Fourth Annual BIMA Conference
At the Lebanese American University
Media and the Transformations of Arab Societies
Beirut, Lebanon
March 16-18, 2004
Orientalism
and the Media: The Case of the BBC
By
Mazin
S. Motabagani
Associate
Professor Orientalistics
Al-Madinah
Center for the Study of Orientalism
Introduction
Many intellectuals
think that Orientalists are mere scholars living in their ivory towers and have
no real relation to the living world. This may be because most Orientalists
either worked for certain governments as agents or experts, or were academics
working in different institutions or unviversities.Though their presence in the
media is very limited but, when we study this deeply we find that many of
the Orientalists took their knowledge to
the Media whether it was journalism, Radio, television and now the internet.
To study this phenomenon of the relationship between
Orientalism and the media deserves to be tackled by many scholars and would
need much more than just a short paper to be presented to this conference. So
this paper will take the BBC as a case study hoping to continue the research in
this field.
After the First World War many European countries have
established radio stations directed to the Arab and Muslim World. Along with
these radio stations magazines and newspapers dealt with topics that can be
classified as Orientalism. To take but one example the BBC which was
established in 1922 has started its Arabic section in 1938 with a clear agenda.
The BBC started its magazine "Al-Mustamie Al Arabi" for many years.
Then another magazine came out to support the audio services of the BBC which
was "Huna London" Now this radio station has a magazine called
"Al-Mushahid Assiasy". Just before the 2ed. World war some prominent
Orientalists have written to the magazine such as H.A.R. Gibb, Bernard Lewis,
Arbery, Joseph Sacht and others.
Since then
the media whether it be written, audio, audio visual or internet have given
Orientalists and Middle East specialists' ample space to participate in the
major programs or main pages of the media. In France for examples the major
French Newspapers and magazines dealt with issues relating to the colonized
countries and particularly to Islamic countries. In Algeria for example the
reformist movement devoted much space in its magazines to refute some of the
writings appeared in French newspapers such "Le Temps" or "L'
observitoir" One of the BBC famous programs is " Politics
Q&A" or "Assiasa bain Assael wa Al mujeeb" was mostly
answered by Orientalists and Middle East specialists.
The BBC
has been studied as a directed radio station from communication point of view.
Some of these studies were masters or PhD theses ([1]). However this may be the first study of BBC
and its relations with Orientalism. It was rather difficult to find all the
volumes of the first publication of the BBC "al-Mustame Al Arabi".
The university library of Muhammad Ben Saud University has only few of
these volumes.([2]) Here we
will devote this paper to the BBC since the beginning in 1938 and its magazines
mentioned above. The paper will be divided into three sections:
·
The first part
will be devoted to give a historical background to the relations between
Orientalism and the media.
·
The second part The BBC and Orientalism
where will survey
some of the major
names in Orientalism and also major topics that are of interest to them.
·
The third part : an
examination of some of the material published in these magazines and apply
content analysis on them.
[1] - Sami
Ashsharif . An Analytical Comparative study
of the Political programs of Both the BBC and Voice of America.(Unpublished
M.A Theses.) Also see Maji Halawani, Introduction to the Directed Radio
Stations.( Cairo: Dar Alfikr Al-Arabi) 1982
[2] - This paper
is hoped to be a first search on this topic which I propose to become a Ph.D
these.
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