BOOKS & ARTS
Radio
State of independence
Kate Chisholm
When the BBC’s Arabic-language network
went out on air for the first time 80 years
ago, on 3 January 1938, its mission was to
provide ‘reliable news’ to a region that was
being fed German and Italian ‘propaganda’
via short-wave transmissions from those
countries. News is still its main focus, says
Bassam Andari, news-gathering editor for
the Arabic service, who has been with the
corporation since 1994, arriving in London
from Lebanon.
He grew up listening to the station
during the civil war in that country in the
1970s. ‘My mother would switch the radio
on to the BBC every morning to find out
what was happening in the world, not just
in Lebanon,’ he recalls. The BBC news cov-
erage was so different from that offered by
Voice of America or Radio Monte Carlo
(broadcasting from Paris). At BBC Arabic,
the news never varied according to who
was in power; it was always ‘independent’,
recalls Andari.
‘Independence’ is not perhaps the first
word you might associate with a radio sta-
tion that grew out of the BBC’s Empire
Service. Originally designed to take BBC
English to the far corners of the globe, by
1938 the power of radio transmission was
fully understood and it was decided to
expand the Empire Service into languages
other than English. Radio as soft power. Yet
it was laid down from the start, in the BBC’s
charter, that the programming on these new
foreign-language stations (Arabic was the
first) should not be propaganda or anti-
propaganda. It has always endeavoured to
preserve this impartial status, not flinching
from difficult stories nor pandering to those
in power.
Most of Andari’s colleagues have been
at BBC Arabic for 30 or 40 years, seeking
an opportunity to promote trustworthy
news. Like Omar El-Tayeb Ahmed, editor
and presenter, who joined the BBC in 1993
from Sudan. He says that the language ser-
vice has changed a great deal since then,
not so much because it’s now challenged
by new stations such as Al Jazeera (fund-
ed by Qatar) and its Saudi rival, Al Arabi-
ya. (That challenge has, if anything, simply
strengthened BBC Arabic’s commitment
to its audience.) But because of the lack of
funding. When he joined, ‘You never had
to worry about money.’ It would always be
there if the story was important. Now the
budget limits what you can do. There are
far fewer correspondents at a time when,
as Andari says, it has become much more
difficult to verify sources. ‘It’s too easy to
fall for news that turns out to be fake. You
have to be much more wary.’
The online Arabic service was set up 20
years ago, but it’s television that has proved
the biggest success, growing to reach 43 mil-
lion viewers per week in the Arabic-speak-
ing world in just ten years. (BBC Arabic
radio has an audience of ten million lis-
teners per week.) ‘News has become much
more important in these unstable times,’
says Andari. But at the same time the audi-
ence has changed. Which is why a news pro-
gramme designed for and made by women
was launched from the Cairo office three
years ago.
Maha Al-Gamal, one of the founder
producers of About Her in Half an Hour,
its English nickname (though more for-
mally known as Women Today), explains,
‘We want to stop husbands speaking for
their wives,’ by looking at news stories
through the eyes of women. The daily half-
hour programme is filmed in the studio
so that listeners can also visualise what’s
happening and recognise that it is womenwho are running the show as presenters
and producers. Every day there is a big
interview with a high-profile woman such
as Ertharin Cousin, who at the time was
executive director of the World Food Pro-
gramme. The interviews seek to draw out
the nature of the work involved, but also
what it involves to take on such a power-
ful role. It’s rather different from Radio
4’s Woman’s Hour, which approaches eve-
rything it does through gender. On About
Her they look at stories through the prism
of news and its impact in the region. ‘We
want to empower women,’ says Al- Gamal.
‘To let women feel they can be in charge of
decision-making.’
Her colleague Rasha Qandeel, from Ara-
bic television, also aims to have more women
on the shows she presents — Arabic ver-
sions of Newsnight and Hard Talk. ‘Women
have to take their rights,’ says Qandeel. ‘You
don’t wait for them to be given to you.’It’s rather different from Woman’s
Hour, which approaches everything it
does through genderTHE LISTENER
Justin Timberlake: Man of the
WoodsGrade: B–
Hey, here comes Justin, the ‘President
of Pop’ and ‘one of the greatest all-
around entertainers in the history
of show business’, according to
the Hollywood Reporter. Sheesh,
shows how far a white man can go
by pretending — pretending very,
very hard — to be black. Maybe
there’s a market in the States for the
black and white minstrels after all.
‘Off to Alabamy with a banjo on ma
knee’, etc. It’s at times like these I’m
with the SJW kids on the subject of
cultural appropriation — but only
because I can’t stand this tripe.
This is Timberlake’s first album
in almost five years and it’s awful,
of course, but not quite as gut-
wrenchingly awful as I had expected.
The lyrics are universally imbecilic
and irritating, and the more hip the
div gets with his tuneless robot rap
and R&B schtick the more stupid
and boring he sounds — see if you
can listen to more than 20 seconds
of the terrible single ‘Filthy’ without
smashing the room up.
But when he starts aping his
long-time heroes Prince and Stevie
Wonder the results are slightly less
enraging: they are not bad heroes
to ape. ‘Midnight Summer Jam’ is
acceptable, perky, upbeat Wonder-
lite. ‘Man of the Woods’ — a truly
fatuous conceit, lyrically — has quite
a becoming tune. ‘Sauce’ pins a nice
growly rawk guitar to an acceptable
chorus. And I actually enjoyed
‘Higher, Higher’, which sounded for
all the world like the wonderful Isley
Bros were back in business. But they
are not back in business and nor,
sadly, is Sly Stone. This is what we
have instead. Lucky us.
— Rod Liddle
‘Remember, lads — no inappropriate touching.’