February 7, 2011

The Nation.

Internet provider and one of the largest producers of content in

the United States. At a time when a small number of giant media
corporations already control what the American people see, hear
and read, we do not need another media conglomerate with control over the production and distribution of media content. What
we need is less concentration of ownership, more diversity, more
local ownershipand more viewpoints.
Small cable providers joined consumer groups to object to
the Comcast-NBCU merger, but most major media and telecom
firms were conspicuously silent as Comcast (which ranked fourth
among corporate contributors to 2010 election campaigns) spent
an estimated $100 million lobbying for approval of the deal.
Why? Comcasts competitors know that with the approval of this
merger, it is hard to imagine any deal that might be considered
too big, too monopolistic or too threatening to democracy. And
make no mistake, deals of this sort pose a huge threat to the discourse that is essential to civil society.
Under pressure to meet the requirement that a merger must
serve the public interest, Comcast made vague promises to increase news and public affairs programming by 1,000 additional
hours a year in media markets where it will dominate communications, and to forge partnerships between NBC stations and
local nonprofit news sites. While that may sound like a concession, the 1,000 additional hours amounts to only sixteen minutes
per day, per station. In a letter outlining the corporations commitment, Comcast tells the FCC that NBC and its stations will
not be obligated to broadcast, publish on an NBCU-controlled
website, or otherwise exhibit or endorse any material produced
by an Online News Partner. Comcasts well-documented history of opposing and obstructing local journalism efforts at
public access and community TV stations leads Josh Stearns,
who monitors journalism issues for Free Press and the Stop Big
Media coalition, to bluntly declare, Comcasts sudden commitment to nonprofit news seems suspect. Bernie Sanders is right
when he suggests that the FCC will have a hard time keeping
Comcast in line. Once we allow companies to become this
powerful, the FCC does not regulate them. They regulate the
FCC, says the senator. The FCC will have a hard time saying
no to competing companies that demand permission to create
equally powerful combines.
The United States desperately needs a coherent media ownership policy for the digital era, and it also has to address the
collapse of journalism forcefully, especially at the local level.
But approving individual mergers as they occur is the wrong
way to generate good policies, unless one is a shareholder in
one of the new mega-super-conglomerates.
This disaster points up the need for Congress and the FCC
to open legislative and public hearings on the scope and character of media ownership in the digital age. We need hearings in
which the communications firms and their battalions of hired
guns do not dominate the proceedings and are not assumed to
be the rightful rulers of culture and journalism. Let the 99.999
percent of Americans who have to live with the consequences of
these mergersthe Americans who have a great if not always
respected material stakejoin the debate. There is an important
precedent: because of pressure from the courts, Congress and
citizens generated during and after the 2003 debate over media

ownership rule changes, the FCC held a series of open hearings

across the country on the future of media. The input was just the
opposite of what the corporations and their hirelings were saying. We need another dose of popular common sense, as the rush
to merge content providers and distributors goes to the heart of
debates about diversity, localism and serving the public interest;
if the American people are brought into those debates, they will
be the best counter to telecom industry lobbying.
The Comcast-NBCU merger will likely establish dangerous
new precedents for media mergers that will make a mockery
of anti-trust laws. Unless we have hearings and legislative and
regulatory action now, we fear that Sanders will be proved right
when he suggests that we are standing at the precipice of an era
of mergers and acquisitions that will make an already bad situation of media consolidation far worse.
ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY AND JOHN NICHOLS

Tunisia Rising
In conventional thinking about the Middle

East, perhaps the most persistent clich is moderate Arab

country. The label seems to apply indiscriminately to monarchies and republics, ancient dictatorships and newly installed
ones, from the Atlantic Coast to the Persian Gulf, so long as
the country in question is of some use to the United States.
And, almost always, it crops up in articles
and policy papers vaunting the need for
COMMENT
America to support these countries, bulwarks against growing Islamic extremism in the Arab world.
A perfect example is Tunisia. Just three summers ago, Christopher Hitchens delivered a 2,000-word ode to the North African
nation in Vanity Fair, describing it as an enclave of development menaced by the harsh extremists of a desert religion.
This is a country with good economic growth, a country where
polygamy was outlawed in 1956, a country with high levels of
education, a country with perfect sandy beaches. And, Hitchens
wrote, it makes delicious wine and even exports it to France.
Never mind that the president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, in
power for twenty-three years, was regularly winning elections
with 90 percent of the vote. Never mind that his wife, Leila
Trabelsi, a former hairdresser, had a stake in almost all of the
countrys businesses. Never mind that the unemployment rate
among college graduates was reportedly as high as 20 percent.
Never mind that there was a police officer for every forty adults
and that the Internet was censored. In January all these things
added up, making the ouster of Ben Ali seem not only possible
but probable, and later inevitable.
The Tunisian uprising began on December 17, when Mohammed Bouazizia college graduate eking out a living selling vegetables whose unlicensed cart was confiscated by the
policeset himself on fire, an act of desperation that inspired
the countrys thousands of unemployed graduates to take to the
streets in protest. Despite severe police repressionarrests,
beatings and murdersthe protests continued for several
weeks, spreading from Bouazizis hometown of Sidi Bouzid to

The Nation.

the rest of the country and culminating on January 14, when

Ben Ali and his family fled the country.
What is striking about the Tunisian revolution is how little
attention it received in the mainstream American press. The
Washington Post mentioned the protests for the first time on
January 5, two and a half weeks into the unrest, when it ran a
wire report about the burial of Bouazizi. Time ran its first piece
about the protests later yet, on January 12. Even those who,
like Thomas Friedman, specialize in diagnosing the ills of the
Arab street did not show much interest.
When the mainstream press finally paid attention, it was
often to explain the success of the Tunisian revolution in terms
of technology. Tunisian Protests Fueled by Social Media Networks, read one typical headline, from CNN. Was it Twitter,
which allowed activists to communicate swiftly and widely
with one another? Was it YouTube, where videos of protesters
and police abuse were posted? Or was it WikiLeaks, whose
cables revealed that Ben Ali and his entourage were mindbogglingly corrupt? But Twitter seemed to be most helpful in
keeping those of us outside the country informed, since few
in the Western media were reporting the story; YouTube was
censored in the country; and WikiLeaks didnt reveal anything
that the Tunisian people did not already know.
In contrast, the Iran uprising of 2009 captured much of
the American medias attention. The Atlantics Andrew Sullivan posted videos, tweets and eyewitness accounts during
the weekend following the Iranian elections. William Kristol
took to the pages of the Washington Post to applaud the brave
protesters. In The Weekly Standard Michael Goldfarb urged the
president to speak up for the Iranians on the street. Although
Twitter, YouTube and Facebook were used widely to disseminate information, Ahmadinejad remained in power, highlighting the limits both of social networks and foreign media in
affecting internal developments.
The Tunisian revolution occurred thanks primarily to the
men and women who protested despite the intimidation, beatings, tear gas and bullets. The death of Bouazizi, the refusal of
Gen. Rachid Ammar to obey Ben Alis orders to shoot, the arrest
of dissident Hamma Hammami and the solidarity of trade unions
and professionals with college studentsall these factors played
an incremental role in keeping the momentum going. In this
modern revolution, the protesters had access to Internet tools
that made it easier for them to get the word out, but those tools
on their own could not topple a dictator.
The initial lack of interest by the American press in the
Tunisian protests may have something to do with the fact that
there was no Islamic angle: the Tunisians were not trying to
oust an Islamic regime, nor were they supporters of a religious
ideology. In other words, this particular struggle for freedom
was not couched in simple terms that are familiar to the Western mediaIslam, bad; America, goodso it took a while for
our commentariat to notice.
While Tunisia, the poster child of a moderate Arab country, was in revolt against tyranny, the French foreign minister,
Michle Alliot-Marie, suggested to the Assemble Nationale
that, as part of the cooperation between the two countries,
French troops could be sent to help stamp out the protests.

February 7, 2011

The minister of culture, Frdric Mitterrand, said that calling

Tunisia a dictatorship was an exaggeration. Yet after Ben Ali
was ousted, President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly refused him
entry into France. In a final irony, the dictator who had been
praised in the West as a bulwark against Islamic extremism ran
off to Saudi Arabia for safe haven.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was
on a tour of Gulf countries, lectured Arab states about the
need for democratic reforms but scrupulously refrained from
mentioning the Tunisian protests. The only official statement
from President Obama came after Ben Ali had been ousted.
Perhaps the Obama administration remained quiet because it
had learned from its experience with Iran that it is best to let
internal matters play out. Or perhaps it was a stunned silence
at the realization that all the conventional thinking about the
Arab world is wrong and that a popular revolution against tyranny can occur without American involvement.
The reverberations of the Tunisian revolution were felt
almost immediately, when Muammar el-Qaddafi scolded Tunisians that they should have had the patience to wait for Ben
Ali to step down in 2014 and warned them about civil chaos.
Of course, this was a warning to the Libyan people, who might
feel inspired to topple their own tyrant. In Mauritania and
Egyptyes, two other moderate Arab countriescopycat
self-immolations are creating deepening worry. And in Jordan
the government has hurriedly put together a plan to lower the
price of fuel and basic commodities.
It is too early to tell whether Mohamed Ghannouchis interim
government will be democratic. The appointment of the activist Slim Amamou as state secretary for youth and sports seems
inspired, but the inclusion of several Ben Ali allies, particularly
at the Interior Ministry, does not make for an auspicious start.
Nor does the exclusion of parties banned under Ben Ali. The
Tunisian people do not yet seem content with the government
that is shaping up, and there are reports of continuing protests.
The revolution is not over. In fact, it may have just begun.
The Tunisian people are expecting justice for those who
died, free and fair elections, and a new political order. But the
three biggest lessons of their uprising have already been delivered far and wide. To the Arab dictators: you are not invincible.
To the West: you are not needed. And to the Arab people: you
are not powerless.
LAILA LALAMI
Laila Lalami, the author of Secret Son, is associate professor at the university of California, Riverside.

Stateside Gitmos
As an increasing number of voices
question the inhumane conditions of detention endured by Army
Pvt. Bradley Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower,
there has been growing pressure on the United States to alter this
treatment. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and other media outlets reported that the UN special rapporteur for torture was formally investigating the conditions of

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