Tamar Ashuri is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion Universitys Department of Communication Studies and in the School of Communications at Sapir College. She received her PhD from the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her recent publications have appeared, inter alia, in Media, Culture & Society, Nation and Nationalism, and Television and New Media, and she is also the author of Media through the Rearview Mirror.
LIBRARY OF MODERN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES
Series ISBN: 978 1 84885 243 3
See www.ibtauris.com/LMMES for a full list of titles
92. Orientalism and Conspiracy: Politics and Conspiracy Theory in the Islamic World
Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi and Ludwig Paul (Eds)
978 1 84885 414 7
93. Honour Killings: International Human Rights and Crimes Against Women in Turkey
Leyl Pervizat
978 1 84885 421 5
94. Gender and Identity in North Africa: Postcolonialism and Feminism in Maghrebi Womens Literature
Abdelkader Cheref
978 1 84885 449 9
95. Kurds of Modern Turkey: Migration, Neoliberalism and Exclusion in Turkish Society
Cenk Saraolu
978 1 84885 468 0
96. Occidentalisms in the Arab World: Ideology and Images of the West in the Egyptian Media
Robbert Woltering
978 1 84885 476 5
97. The Army and the Radical Left in Turkey: Military Coups, Socialist Revolution and Kemalism
zgr Mutlu Ulus
978 1 84885 484 0
98. Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East
Radwan Ziadeh
978 1 84885 434 5
99. The Copts of Egypt: The Challenges of Modernisation and Identity
Vivian Ibrahim
978 1 84885 499 4
100. The Kurds of Iraq: Ethnonationalism and National Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan
Mahir Aziz
978 1 84885 546 5
101. The Politics and Practices of Cultural Heritage in the Middle East: Positioning the Material Past in Contemporary Societies
Irene Maffi and Rami Daher (Eds)
978 1 84885 535 9
102. The Politics and Poetics of Ameen Rihani: The Humanist Ideology of an Arab-American Intellectual and Activist
Nijmeh Hajjar
978 1 84885 266 2
103. The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era
Fatma Mge Gek
978 1 84885 611 0
Published in 2010 by Tauris Academic Studies
An imprint of I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd
6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
www.ibtauris.com
Distributed in the United States and Canada
Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010
Copyright 2010 Tamar Ashuri
The right of Tamar Ashuri to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Library of Modern Middle East Studies 73
ISBN 978 1 84511 814 3
eISBN 978 0 85773 066 4
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author
In memory of Roger Silverstone
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Roger Silverstone, for his invaluable comments and criticism, as well as the skilful and humorous way he helped me see my arguments more clearly and accept the fact that many questions would remain unanswered.
Nick Couldry, Terhi Rantanen and Robin Mansell contributed immensely to this work. Their conscientious readings of an earlier version yielded numerous suggestions for significant improvements.
I am extremely grateful to all those people who took part in this study. I thank them for giving of their time and insights and hope that this book does justice to their experience.
I would like to thank Sapir Academic College and the Israel Science Foundation for helping fund the publication of this book.
Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Menahem Yaari and Annabelle Winograd for their love and support, without which this project would not have been possible.
INTRODUCTION
In 1998, a television documentary was aired simultaneously in three nations/cultures: the United Kingdom, the United States and in a number of Arab-States. The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs, a six part documentary series, was produced in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the State of Israel. At its core was the half a century of conflict between Israel and the Arabs. In order to make this series possible, an international co-production framework was set up with funding from three sources: the BBC, the programmes initiator; WGBH Boston (PBS); and MBC Abu-Dhabi/London. All three of these broadcasting organizations were given the right to edit their own version of the final product. The co-production eventually spawned three distinct national/cultural versions, which were broadcast in their respective nations/cultures: Britain, the United States, and parts of the Arab world. Each of the products offers a different reading of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The very existence of three distinct versions of the same series foregrounds the question that stands at the heart of this book: How do economic interactions between television co-producers from different countries manifest themselves in the content of the cinematic history and narrated reality that is produced? More specifically, to what extent do these sorts of joint ventures give rise to new and complex representations of shared memory? To what extent do these cultural products confront and challenge narratives that have tended to be associated with old TV (national rather than globally-situated)? This, then, leads us to the broader and principal subject of the present work: How are the industrial changes that are currently sweeping through the television industryforemost among them the shift from a national and largely monopolised sector to an international and even global enterprisereflected in the content of the programmes being produced? This question is part of a macro theme which was lucidly articulated by Graham Murdock (1996:103): How does the industrial organization of television impinge on its organization as a system of meaning? Clearly, the television industry can be, and has been, studied and conceived as an enterprise that shares many characteristics with other manufacturing sectors, but it is also unique in that the goods it produces play a pivotal role in framing the discourses that help people make sense of the world (e.g. Elliott 1972; Silverstone 1983; 1985; 1994; Abercrombie 1996; Corner 1999; 2003). Television, according to Livingstone, has made enormous changes in peoples everyday lives over the [past] few decades. Developments in new technologies and increased leisure ensure that the mass media will continue to structure and influence peoples experiences and understanding of their social world (Livingstone 1998:vii).
