[eccr] TBS 10 is out

PRESS RELEASE – April 22, 2003

TBS 10 

www.tbsjournal.com 

The Adham Center for TV Journalism of the American University in Cairo
announces the publication of Issue 10 of the Transnational Broadcasting
Studies Journal, the Middle East’s only on-line publication dedicated to the
study of satellite television.

No previous war has been the subject of such intensive press coverage as the
current fighting in Iraq.  Viewers have been taken to the battle front in
real time and have watched the fall of cities, men, and statues.  Many,
however, feel that the press, whether “embedded” with Coalition forces or
“subject to monitoring” or the other side of the line, has become an actor
in the conflict.  One satellite channel has even been accused of violating
the Geneva Convention, surely a first for a media organization.  TBS 10
provides a window onto these extraordinary developments in the history of
the world’s media.  Our main theme is Covering the Coverage.

Under Dispatches from the Field, we give the reader a glimpse of the
realities of being a transnational broadcaster in the field, with diaries,
letters, and reportage from journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan; we report from
the “curious force field” that emanates from the Gulf and interview a U S
army Public Information Officer, as well as Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV, and Al
Arabiya, the giants of the Arab media; and we examine some of the technical,
logistical, and servicing challenges faced by satellite television in
covering this war. 

Mediating the War includes articles analyzing war coverage out of a number
of countries and from disparate perspectives.  We look at the British
channels and their public, while the performance of the Arab channels is
critiqued from two angles.  How the Palestinians brought their own concerns
to their watching, and the credibility and ratings war among the Arab media
are also covered.  The response of Turkey’s nascent satellite industry to
the war on the country’s doorstep is examined, as is that of India’s media.
We also include a major to-date archive of the press’s own coverage of
itself, with 26 of the most representative articles in which journalists
attack, defend, and dissect each other’s work, prefaced by Eason Jordan’s
admission that CNN suppressed news to protect their Baghdad bureau staff in
the days before the war and Robert Jensen’s claim that images of recent
civilian deaths have been suppressed too.  The “Peter Arnett affair” is
reviewed in the protagonists’ own words and finally a jaundiced eye is cast
at the whole Iraq coverage enterprise in “Credo of a Crouching Couch
Potato.” 

Issues and Developments ranges more broadly, from “cultural hegemony” to
technical developments and industry moves, but transcriptions of panels at
the past year’s major media fora, and our Conference Reports section, bring
us back to the risks and rewards of covering conflict whether in Palestine
or the then still-to-come Iraq war.  Academic Papers provides example of
recent research on regional transnational media from the Arab media scene in
London through public discourse on Al Jazeera channel and the relationships
between Turkey’s media groups and their US counterparts.



Check us out at www.tbsjournal.com <http://www.tbsjournal.com>



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