PULLMAN – The winds of change are howling across the Middle East and no one knows what the political landscape will look like when the dust settles.But, said Lawrence Pintak, founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, one thing is clear: Repressive governments no longer can expect to control the flow of information in or out of their countries – and the implications are huge.
“There are no borders anymore,” he said. “That is the bottom line.”
Wednesday morning brought news that anti-government protests have erupted in Libya, making it the most recent in a growing list of Middle Eastern countries where protesters have taken to the streets to demand government reforms.
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How is U.S. viewed? Read here about a survey conducted by Pintak and a colleague of Muslim journalists for “insight into where their beliefs and priorities intersect with American interests.”
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“This revolt was literally started by flames,” Pintak said. In December a desperate fruit stand vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire outside a government building and the image was captured on a cell phone. Since then protests have erupted across the region, including in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan and Iran.
In that image and others that followed of the Tunisian protests, Arabs saw “a common Arab narrative, a common way of looking at the world,” Pintak said. People were inspired and thought, “If Tunisia can do it, so can we.”
Unlike any other time in history, he said, people know, in real time, what is happening in their own country and in neighboring countries.
“These governments are still trapped in old ways of thinking,” he said. They think they can arrest, imprison and kill the messenger, he said, “but it doesn’t work anymore.”
Pintak, author of the “The New Arab Journalist,” published this month by I.B. Tauris, spoke Tuesday night as part of WSU’s Common Reading Program. His talk was titled “Arab Media and Politics: The Perfect Storm.”
Prior to joining WSU in 2009, Pintak spent four years as director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo. He had a 30-year career as a foreign correspondent, much of it with CBS News, before becoming an educator, and he said some of his former students have been at the center of the revolution.
Cell phones and social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, were critical in the early stages of the revolution, he said.
“They were constantly in touch with each other,” he said. “It was an 18-day revolution, but they had been working on it for years.”
Bloggers and activists had studied the protests in Iran following the 2009 elections, the so-called Twitter Revolution, he said, and they learned from it. With help from outside, they were able to subvert or delay government attempts to shut down information pathways.
By the time the Egyptian government shut down the Internet on Jan. 28, it was too late, he said. A Friday protest – a Day of Rage – already had been called for and went forward as planned. At that point, satellite television brought more people out of their homes and into the streets.
Satellite television has been hugely important, Pintak said. When Al Jazeera was started in 1996 by the Amir of Qatar, there was only one other Arab satellite channel, he said. But now there are 500 Arab channels.
In contrast, when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the Saudi people did not know of the invasion until three days later.
“That’s like Canada invading Idaho and us not knowing about it,” Pintak said.
The protests in Egypt erupted nearly simultaneously with the announcement of the publication of Pintak’s book on the Arab media. In the last three weeks Pintak has been a sought after news analyst around the world. A short list of media appearances or print publications includes the New York Times, TV Ontario, Al Jazeera English, ABC Sydney, MSNBC, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, Wired Magazine, and The Guardian (UK).
This year’s Common Reading Program selection is “Stones into Schools” by Greg Mortensen. Pintak’s lecture was the 12th in the lecture series and the fourth this semester.
The next common reading lecture will feature Mark Mulder of the College of Business who will discuss social entrepreneurship at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 22, in CUE 203.