Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a beautiful princess named Rym. But this princess was sad, for the voices of her people were but a whisper. It was her fervent desire to hear singing in the land, to hear the town criers shout news from the highest parapets.
But evil forces conspired against this fair maid. Truth be known, in the king s own entourage there were those who bowed obsequiously, yet secretly plotted to turn her dreams to dust.
Verily, at a gala feast, the princess proclaimed for all and sundry her Utopian dreams of lifting the veil from her subjects and creating paths to understanding between peoples. Yet among those spellbound by her soaring oratory sat a scribe sentenced to be dragged away to the dungeons for the bold act of speaking of dastardly deeds among the powers that be.
But in a neighboring kingdom, there lived a dark and brooding lord who had no patience for princesses with wishes, and even less for men who wielded electronic quills against his swords of steel. His dungeons were crowded with those who raised their voices in defiance and, for a time, he counted among his inmates she who came to be known as Facebook Girl.
Standing in the electronic town square, this brave young lass proclaimed that the emperor had no clothes, and forthwith traded hers for prison garb.
Rulers of the surrounding lands sided with the dark prince. One day, they penned a royal charter that proclaimed off with their heads for any among the rabble with the temerity to question their benign rule.
The peasants were revolting. Especially those with television cameras and internet connections.
Unfortunately, as the latest Freedom House report underlines, the relationship between media and state in the Middle East and North Africa is no fairy tale. Not a single Arab country has a press classified as free . For every step forward, there is at least one step back. For every official committed to loosening the reins, there is a lawyer filing suit or a police thug with a blood-spattered baton. The rack may be history, but electric probes are today s preferred instrument of persuasion.
The contrast between Princess Rym al-Ali, sister-in-law of Jordan s king, and the plight of 27-year-old Esraa Abdel Fattah, Egypt s Facebook Girl, succinctly sums up the contradictions inherent in the Arab world s government-media relations.
Princess Rym, a former CNN correspondent, is on a quest to build the region s first Arabic language graduate school of journalism. Facebook Girl, meanwhile, found herself being hustled off by Egyptian state security after creating a group on the popular social networking site that attracted 75,000 members and served as the spark for the country s recent strikes against President Hosni Mubarak.
The contempt for – and fear of – the media on the part of many Arab regimes can be seen in the seizure of satellite uplink equipment, the blocking of websites, and a host of increasingly overt efforts to beat the media genie back into its bottle.
The new Arab Satellite Broadcasting Charter allows governments to pull the plug on offensive television channels. The Arab League claims that it s aimed at politicized Islamic channels radicalizing youth, but the Mubarak regime wasted no time closing down a London-based opposition channel, undermining that claim.
The charter is emblematic of the degree to which Arab governments are struggling to cope with the cacophony of criticism seeping into their countries through satellite television, the internet and SMS. Opponents no longer just rally, now they twitter . Banning television cameras is no longer enough when every cell phone is a potential weapon in the media war. Social networking sites where 12-year-old girls trade make-up secrets have become breeding grounds for revolution.
The media ripple effect creates waves of information, breaching the walls of censorship with which Arab leaders have so long defended their castles. Each new story about public discontent reinforces the last.
Yet beware, too, the white knights. Just ask Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, finally released after six years imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who served 735 days in American detention in Iraq. No evidence, no charges, no trial in either case.
It is likely to be a long time before any Arab journalist lives happily ever after.
Lawrence Pintakis director of the Kamal Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo and publisher/co-editor of www.ArabMediaSociety.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and originally appeared in Washington Post/Newsweek s Post Global.
