Western TV News Spurs ‘Information Revolution’ Among Arabs : Media: The broadcasts, though edited, are not tightly censored, raising prospects for social change.

The round-the-clock news coverage of the Persian Gulf War may have changed television viewing habits in the United States. But in the sheltered Arab states of the region, it has swept aside the curtain of tight censorship and raised the prospects of a social revolution.

As in the West, CNN has played a central role in this change, but broadcasts relayed by the U.S. and British armed forces networks have also played a part.

Since the war began, CNN has been played live over television stations in Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Saudi Arabia, the largest of the Gulf states, has used mainly delayed--and edited--versions of CNN. But the broadcasts from Bahrain and Qatar are easily received in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, the area closest to Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.

“We have taken a conscious decision to have openness in the media,” said Bahraini Information Minister Tarik Moayyid. “Now everybody realizes that whatever is happening has got to be the province of everybody who lives here, that it is not a top secret thing, which only a few should know about. If you want to call it an information revolution, you can do that.”

Moayyid said he believes the new sense of openness will be translated into increased popular participation in government decision-making in the Gulf, which is ruled in every country by hereditary royal families.

“There’s no way you can go back. Once you give the people something, you can’t go back; you’ve given them participation in public thinking and thinking on what’s good for the country,” Moayyid said.

In addition to carrying CNN live nearly all day, Bahrain Radio in both English and Arabic has started broadcasting 24-hour programming that includes a good deal of discussion about events across the Gulf in Saudi Arabia.

For example, CNN’s news coverage about Scud missile attacks on Dhahran--usually broadcast before the official air raid sirens sound--has stimulated a debate about why the Bahrain government has failed to provide its population with gas masks while Saudi Arabia has given its citizens in the Eastern Province the protective devices.

The broadcasts have also given the Gulf states their first unfiltered access to reports from Israel and Iraq, in some cases stimulating sympathy for Israeli victims of missile attacks and in others causing confusion over Iraqi propaganda statements.

The confusion stems from a long history of censorship: Traditionally, if something appeared on television, it had government approval and must be officially accepted.

As the Al Ayam newspaper recently noted: “All this advanced technology descended on a society not used to listening to news from diverse and often conflicting sources of information.”

Perhaps as a result, some of the governments of the region have kept up a residual filter on events. Dubai television puts a slide and music on the screen during CNN reports from Israel and Iraq, although, obviously, mention of both place slips through.

The Saudis have been the most thorough in editing out references to Israel, because much of the CNN coverage is broadcast on a delayed basis. Even mention of Israel in President Bush’s State of the Union speech was bleeped out, as if it were an obscenity.

“There is a quest for openness, especially facts about the war,” said Shihab Jamjoon, Saudi deputy minister of information. “It’s too early to tell whether the changes will be temporary or permanent. Because there is war, people have nothing to do but talk about it. All this exposure to news is very new to people here.”

Jamjoon said there was criticism of some CNN broadcasts for sending out information that had not been checked--a reference to reports about Scud missiles heading toward Saudi cities. Some of the reports proved premature or inaccurate but caused local panic.

Saudi officials, such as Prince Fahd ibn Salman, the vice governor of Eastern Province, have gone on national television recently to suggest that the presence of large numbers of American troops should have no social consequences for the country, which adheres to Islamic fundamentalism in such spheres as legal matters and separation of the sexes.

Salman said that, proportionately, there were more Americans in the Eastern Province after the discovery of oil in the 1950s than there are now and that there were no negative consequences then for Saudi society.

In the United Arab Emirates, television viewing has become a national obsession since the war began, even though the country is out of range if Iraqi missiles. Tiny televisions can be spotted even on the dashboards of the country’s many expensive imported cars.

“The Emirates has never had unimpeded access to a foreign television station,” said a journalist in Dubai. “There is a sense of having passed a point of no return, that people have a right to full information.”

But the government, beyond deleting references to Israel and Iraq, still blanks out programming it considers offensive due to sexual content. Television in Sharjah, the most conservative of emirates, has continued, alone, to ignore CNN.

A journalist at one Gulf newspaper said the pressure of outside broadcasts had made it easier to report on a host of controversial subjects, from the stationing of foreign troops in the Gulf states to the potential impact of the giant oil spill Iraq unleashed last month.

Still, there are few voices raised publicly in support of Saddam Hussein, except in such countries as Jordan, which have large Palestinian populations and where the Parliament has issued declarations in support of Iraq.

In Jordan, the media has also moved toward greater openness, according to former Jordan Times Editor Rami Khoury. But, as in the Gulf, television stations put emphasis on developments the regime considers positive.

When the war with Iraq erupted, Jordanian television showed the same dramatic footage of antiaircraft fire shooting through the night sky at U.S. warplanes. But rather than describing the apparent success of the U.S. bombing raids, the Jordanian announcer proclaimed how effective the Iraqi resistance appeared to be.