From : mamoun.fandy@googlemail.com
Sent : Sunday, October 8, 2006 11:21 PM
To : arabtimesnewspaper@hotmail.com
Subject : 

Who Finances the Arab Media?
Dr. Mamoun Fandy
www.fandy.us

To understand the Arab Media, its objectives and agenda, one has to know who finances it and why. For Example, who finances the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi? It is a newspaper that venerates Usama bin Laden and refers to him as "Sheikh Usama"! It is a newspaper that owns a publishing house in London and has no single advertisement in its pages. To have a newspaper like this, according to media professionals, costs about thirty million dollars. The distribution of the newspaper does not exceed three thousands per day? How can a newspaper survive on its meager circulation in Diaspora communities to pay salaries, rents, and publishing costs? How can someone like Atwan who used to work as an editor for al-Madina newspaper in Jeddah and who comes from a poor Palestinian background afford publishing a newspaper that requires $30 million to set up? Where did this money come from?

Is there any linkage between venerating Bin Laden and the lack of advertising? Is there any financial linkage between this newspaper and terror money or money laundering? Only the British authorities can answer these questions. Al-Quds al-Arabi is a limited liability British company. Aren't there laws in England that audits newspapers and balances the sheets to tell us who finances this newspaper that venerates Bin Laden? Is Britain a country without laws? Abdul Bari Atwan the editor of the newspaper who provides justification for killing Americans on al-Jazeera and his newspaper is a frequent guest on the BBC. He promotes terrorism in Arabic and yet the BBC producers treat him as a legitimate expert. Unless many naïve Westerners read Arabic they have no way of understanding the Agenda of Atwan, Al-Quds al-Arabi or al-Jazeera. “Al-Jazeera is more than three armies fighting along the side of the terrorists” says one Arab Media analyist. Unfortunately,
, the Americans and the Europeans still believe that it is breaking taboos in the Arab world.

This is the PR line that the bin Ladenists of the Arab world push through their well paid American and British PR companies. The price of this naivety is the death of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan every month. Is there any linkage between these kinds of media that legitimates terrorist acts and glorifies terrorists and the way these newspapers and news channels are financed, especially if we know that the revenue from advertisement is meager? These are the first questions anyone who wants to study Arab media should ask. Follow the money.

To find the answers to these questions and more, read Mamoun Fandy's upcoming book “Who owns the Arab Media”



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