Foreign Support for Media Freedom Advocacy in the Arab Mediterranean: Globalization from Above or Below?

Abstract

Recent structural changes to the Arab audio-visual media scene have encouraged an increasing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in media freedom advocacy to launch initiatives aimed at making Arab broadcast media more pluralistic and boosting the independence and professionalism of broadcast journalists. Some interventions follow a top-down formula, sidestepping existing institutions that may be undemocratic, whereas others seek to work for change from below and within. This article, while conceptualizing such divergence in terms of Falk's distinction between globalization-from-above and globalization-from-below, also follows Wilkin in questioning whether these two categories can plausibly be separated from each other. Using two case studies of organizations that channel foreign grants into media-related activism in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine, the essay explores how separate these categories may be in practice and assesses the validity of claims that foreign funding of advocacy NGOs depoliticizes and fragments civil society.

Notes

¹ Author's transcript of remarks made during London briefing on 13 October 2003.

² Author's transcript of remarks made during London briefing on 30 March 2005.

³ The CDFJ's close ties to the Jordanian government were evident in February 2005 when King Abdullah of Jordan sponsored a CDFJ conference in Amman on ‘ Media and Good Governance’.

⁴ The list includes unions and associations in Venezuela, Peru, Guatemala, Paraguay, Benin, Lithuania and elsewhere. It also includes the code adopted by the Association of Tunisian Journalists in 1975. See http://www.presscouncils.org

⁵ For example, women's rights campaigner Farida Naqqash and playwright Fathiyya al-Aassal, both active in Egypt's leftist Tagammu party, and Lebanon's Future TV reporter Najat Sharafeddin.

⁶ Remarks made on 1 June. Author's transcript.