Syrian Media Control in Times of Change

by: Tobias Goldschmidt

1. Introduction 3

2. Mechanisms of Media Control in Syria 6

2.1. Print Media Censorship 6
2.2. Internet Censorship 8

3. Media Control in a Changing Syria 9

3.1. Creation of a New Leader 10
3.2. Creation of a New Leadership Network 11
3.3. New Objectives of Media Control: Camouflaging Economic Reform and Calming its Losers 14

4. Conclusion: Media Control in the New Syria 15

5. References 20

1. Introduction

It is permissible [for licensed non-state actors to issue newspapers, TG] within certain measures. What is the aim of the paper? This is the basis. Does it serve the national and pan-Arab line? […] There will be principles that aim to make the mass media contribute to the development process. The paper should not be with no clear objective, nor should its objective be a hindrance to the development process. The existence of open information does not mean that issues would be out of co ntrol of the Ministry of Information, and this indicates clearly that the State¹ wants people to possess means of knowledge including information. Otherwise, the State would have prevented [Satellite, TG] dishes and this is not difficult for the State. This indicates that the state’s wish is to enable Syrian citizens to receive information. The one who is not open cannot be closed with local press and open with foreign press.²

Bashar Al-Assad made these two statements in the same interview with Al-Sharq al-Awsat in early 2001. They serve as a great example for a dilemma his government faces. On the one hand, it assumes that the media should contribute to a program of national development, and on the other hand, it has to cope with the fact that there is foreign information flowing into Syria that cannot be restricted without immense political and economic costs. Despite Bashar Al- Assad’s declaration that it would be easy for “the State” to prohibit satellite dishes, I feel quite safe to agree with Dale Eickelman, who argues that access to new technologies has multiplied the channels through which ideas and information can be circulated and has enlarged the scope of what can be said and to whom. It has eroded the ability of authorities to censor and repress, to project an uncontested ‘central’ message defining political and religious issues for large numbers of people.³

Even if president Assad desired to prevent any flow of dissenting information, his state apparatus would not be able to do so. There have always been ways to bypass the censor, and the emergence of New Media has increased the costs of efficient media control. It has become technically easier to bypass the censor without having to cope with unreasonably high economic and personal risks.

However, media control in Syria is not so much about preventing every unwanted communication in order to control peoples thoughts, as it is about trying to stabilize the regime by restricting unwanted information, and shaping mainstream political and societal discourse in favor of national development. Censorship can also be seen as a form of communication between the state and its citizens. By censoring a political newspaper article for example, the state signals that it is unwilling to compromise on the respective issue with which the article is dealing. John Phelan correctly states that censorship falls into the same category as state propaganda. It is done in order to reaffirm that the state is in control. ⁴ Alan George argues:

[T]he regime’s dogged insistence on censorship of domestic news outlets is in essence much the same as its requirement for 99.9 per cent approval rates in preside ntial plebiscites and its state-managed pro-regime demonstrations by ‘the popular masses’. No one in Syria or anywhere is fooled, but that is not the point. What really matters about such absurdities is that they are an expression of regime power.⁵

Under Hafiz Al-Assad Syria has managed to create a very sophisticated mosaic of tools to control its media. However, the Syrian government does not have the means to control all forms of unwanted communication, although in a 2004 worldwide press freedom index the media watchdog Reporters without Borders ranked Syria only as low as 155th among 167 countries.⁶ But since Syria has never been a totalitarian state, the objective has not been to control every flow of “bad” communication. ⁷ Total control of people’s minds is not the objective of Syrian media control. Instead, its objective is to prevent the proliferation of destabilizing news to large audiences, to express the regime’s power, and to provide all Syrians with the same basis of information, which paves the way for the creation of a common nationalist discourse, which in turn has a unifying impact on Syrian society. The last reason is in my opinion especially relevant for censorship of pornographic or other non-political materials.

Syrians know that print media are heavily controlled and serve as mouthpieces of the go vernment. They als know how to bypass the censor, and they master reading between the lines⁸ so that even the heavily controlled print media carries valuable information for them. Since Syria is a small country with large families, interpersonal communication plays an important role for spread- ing non-controlled news, too. Even before people were able to access Satellite TV and the Internet, about two thirds of them used their radios to listen to foreign radio stations. ⁹ For this reason we should not make the mistake to assume that Syrians are cut off from critical viewpoints, although Syrian media control seems overwhelming to the western observer. Traditional forms of communication, for example a chat in the suq, a discussion in the street, or a conversation at home, etc. are still very important in Arab societies. Kai Hafez argues that traditional communication in many countries and regions is the most important source of political information. In many cases where modern mass media became victims of state censorship, traditional communication took care of the distribution of the banned items of information.¹⁰

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1 Capitalized in the original document

2 Al-Sharq al-Awsat: Interview with President Bashar Al-Assad, 8 February 2001

3 Eickelman, Dale: Communication and Control in the Middle East, in: Eickelman/Anderson 2003, p.32

4 Phelan 1968, p.xiii

5 George 2003, p.134

6 Reporters without Borders, East Asia and Middle East have worst Press Freedom Records, Press Release, Paris, 26 October 2004

7 Hinnebusch 1999, p.89; Perthes 2004, p.11

8 Zubaidi 2004, p.77

9 George 2003, p.134

10 Hafez, Kai: Mass Media in the Middle East – Patterns of Political and Societal Change, in: Hafez (ed.) 2001, p.11