JMEM Special Issue: Media accountability in the Arab World

Pioneering research on media accountability in the Arab World: A special Issue of the Journal of Middle East Media (JMEM) is online

A pioneering compilation of media accountability studies in the Arab World has been published in a Special Issue of the Journal of Middle East Media (JMEM). Guest editors Susanne Fengler and Monika Lengauer from the Institute of Journalism, Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism (EBI), TU Dortmund University in Germany, brought together researchers from Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the peer reviewed JMEM. The journal’s Special Issue intends to “initiate and promote a critical academic debate about media accountability” in countries of the Middle East and North Africa, said Susanne Fengler. JMEM’s senior editor Prof. Hesham Mesbah, Rollins College, USA, appreciates the “invaluable contribution to de-Westernizing scholarship on mass communication and media studies”. JMEM is published simultaneously in both Arabic and English. Its Arabic editor, Prof. Abdulrahman Al-Shami at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar, suggests that “with media accountability, an innovative proposition adds value to research in the Arabic language”. The broader concept of media accountability discusses non-state means that hold the media accountable towards the public, and that includes not only journalists but media users and other stakeholders of the media in the process of journalistic quality management.

JMEM’s Special Issue sets the stage with two essays contributing to basic research: Fengler deconstructs the theoretic proposition of media accountability and interrelates her global and European research to empirical works conducted in Arab countries. With a focus on journalism education at Arab universities, Lengauer views media accountability through the theory of professions.

Five empirical case studies reveal different systems and approaches to media accountability in the Maghreb and the Levant. Abdelmalek El Kadoussi, Bouziane Zaid, and Mohammed Ibahrine found that social media is among the most appreciated media accountable instruments (MAIs) in Morocco. Khaled Gulam's analysis of media accountability in Libya shows that ongoing political and armed conflicts hinder reform and new legislation regulating the media sector. Nadia Leihs explores what instruments of media accountability exist in the Egyptian media and how journalists perceive them. Philip Madanat and Judith Pies stress that media freedom is a priority for Jordanian respondents, and that they view media accountability as an accompanying process. Ayman Mhanna and Karim Safieddine reveal Lebanon’s generally poor quality of official bodies for media accountability on the one hand and the vibrant non-official MAIs on the other hand. Judith Pies and Philip Madanat underpin from the Syrian perspective that times of violent conflicts heighten the need for responsible media.  

The Special Issue’s concluding assessment is, as per Fengler’s suggestion, to “broaden the perspective and to take into account the many forms of media accountability beyond the typically Western media accountability systems”. Media accountability in MENA mainly follows models coined “foreign donor”- incentivized or “mimicry” models of media accountability.

At the AUSACE Conference 2022, Fengler and Lengauer organized a panel on the issue of media accountability in the Arab World with distinguished scholars.