Data Selection: Population and Sampling

The term ‘population’ of data constitutes a multi-faceted investigation of persons, objects and events, whereas a ‘sampling’ of data is a specific portion of a ‘population’ (Kumar: 2002); in practical terms, if the selection of AJA’s two programmes is considered to be the ‘population’, then ‘sampling’ is the selection of specific episodes in four electoral moments in relation to the MB and the Mubarak regime.

Data selection in this research will be based on analysing relevant episodes of two TV talk-shows obtained from AJA’s digital archives,

covering four key electoral moments in Egypt: two before and two after the Egyptian 2011 revolution.

The TV programmes which will be examined are two popular, current- affairs talk-shows: Without Borders and Opposite Direction:

Figure 5: The two main targeted TV programmes to be analysed

(i) Without Borders: presented by Ahmed Mansour. Each episode hosts one guest, usually selected from senior public figures, and often top Islamic leadership.

(ii) Opposite Direction: a weekly TV programme presented by Faisal Al-Qassam, in the same format as the American Cross Fire production that hosts two guests with extreme opposite views.

The choice to examine the above two AJA flagship TV programmes (each has a different format) is to offer this research suitably representative content to assess the channel’s language and its relationship with social

Opposite Direction Without Borders

reality. Unlike news, these two key TV programmes offer in-depth debate on a wide range of political and social issues directly linked to Arab countries, including the growing political role of the MB movement and the Mubarak regime in Egypt, before and after the 2011 uprising, and the controversial discussions surrounding the movement’s role.

Having reviewed the existing literature, not many studies focused on TV programmes as most studies focused on news such as (Miladi 2006, Barkho 2011).

Nevertheless, the examination of these two programmes set the ground of further future research for the channel’s general newscasts and the language used. The two selected TV programmes and presenters are:

(A) Without Border’s Ahmad Mansour

Without Borders (دودح لاب) was (at the time of writing) a weekly, one-to-one programme which broadcast on the AJA channel, presented by one of AJA’s predominant television hosts, Ahmad Mansour. The programme hosted Arab leaders, influential people, politicians, experts, and decision- makers and allowed them to discuss particular topics related to politics, economy, religion, and other issues.

Noticeable is the fact that Mr Mansour was both the presenter and the producer of the programme. He selected the topics, guests, talking points, and then moderated the programme himself. Mansour explained to this researcher that his role, as a presenter, was to open the discussion and then play the role of ‘devil’s advocate’ – to show an objective stand - in which he represented the opposite view held by his guest:

If the guest is a minister or a president, I adopt the view of the opposition, whereas if the guest is from the opposition, I adopt the government’s view (email interview with Mansour 2014).

Some critics claimed that Ahmad Mansour had strong ties with the Muslim Brotherhood (ITP News: 2014), arguably evidenced by being rewarded with several interviews with the top leadership of the movement including its Supreme Leader, Mohammed Badei, his deputy, Khairat El-Shater, the Egyptian former prime minister, Hisham Qandil, and the deposed president, Mohammed Morsi (Al-Qassemi: 2012).

Mansour’s social media accounts - Twitter and Facebook (which have a considerable number of followers19), reveal that, since the outbreak of the Egyptian uprising, the presenter’s views were expressed in favour of the MB: he denounced the overthrow of the MB’s elected president, Mohammed Morsi, and showed robust opposition to the Military Council.

19

On Twitter and Facebook, Ahmad Mansour has some 377,000 followers [retrieved 1/03/2015]

Mansour openly criticised the Mubarak regime, and described the ‘military coup’ in July 2013 as orchestrated by ‘Mubarak’s remnants’ (Foloul: لولف), after the MB had been in power for only one year. In November 2013, for example, shortly after the fall of Morsi, Ahmad Mansour posted a Tweet on his Twitter account, addressing the Military-General, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, and promising him retaliation for his actions against the MB:

Hey you, Al-Sisi, killer and war criminal, wait for a daily painful strike to your head from me, through an article, a programme, or a Tweet, on behalf of bereaved mothers, widows and orphans (November, 2013)20.

When asked about his views reflected on social media platforms, and the risk they may have shown that he held an imbalanced viewpoint as a TV programme moderator, Mansour insisted that journalists and programme presenters across the world expressed their personal views on their social media platforms. These views, according to him, were not necessarily mirrored in what they presented on TV:

I’m like them. If you go back to my articles and posts I wrote during Morsi’s presidential time, you will find that most of them stand against him, as well as his way of ruling. Such views are not reflected in my programme (email interview with Mansour: January 2014).

Mansour was declared a ‘wanted’ person by the Egyptian authorities, following the fall of Morsi in 2013. Abdel Bari Attwan (2013), the former editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote an article in which he asserted that the perceived association of Mansour to the MB was common knowledge. Attwan criticised the action that the Egyptian authorities had taken against AJA’s presenter, as it was based on trumped-up charges, not on facts, according to him. Attwan also pointed out that Mansour had declared that Morsi should be re-instated, a possible reflection of the presenter’s association and supporter of the MB and its members:

The affiliation of Mansour to an Islamic group, namely the Muslim Brotherhood, isn’t a secret. He himself has publicly declared it in his articles and interviews. He has stood on the Muslim Brotherhood’s protest stage, aggressively criticising the Military Council and supporting the legitimacy of Mohammed Morsi […] and demanding his return to his presidential palace

Mansour’s ‘wanted’ status prevented him from travelling from Qatar to Egypt to attend his brother’s funeral in April 2014, due to the allegations made by what he called ‘the leaders of the military coup’ (Shaban, 2014).

Mansour was also sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Egyptian authorities, accused of torturing and sexually assaulting a lawyer during the 2011 uprising against the former president, Hosni Mubarak (Daily News Egypt, 2014). His response, according to AJA’s website (2014), was to utterly deny the accusation, and, in retaliation, he attacked the Egyptian

military regime and judicial system in Egypt, ‘led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’, the new Egyptian president. He charged them with fabricating the claim without any concrete evidence. Mansour wrote:

Several people have asked me to comment on such a verdict. I do not comment on corrupt verdicts, coming from a corrupt legal system and a bloody [military] coup and criminal regime (Al-Jazeera (Arabic) website: 2014).

The Egyptian authorities reacted by confiscating Ahmad Mansour’s assets and belongings in Egypt (Al-Shorouk Online, 2014). This action against the presenter was not the first: during the 2005 election, he was assaulted by two unknown men, while waiting for his guest outside AJA’s office in Cairo (see Appendix EP3, EX4). This incident reflects the tense political situation in Egypt on the one hand, and how Mansour was possibly regarded as an opponent of the Mubarak regime, even before the Egyptian uprising, on the other.

Ahmad Mansour, by openly expressing his political views and passionate statements on social media platforms, was therefore perceived as heavily involved (active participant) in the political scene in Egypt, with strong views in favour of the MB and against the Mubarak regime, which is perhaps problematic, not only for the reputation and objectivity of his programme which he moderated, but also for AJA as a whole.

(B) Opposite Direction’s Faisal Al-Qassem

Opposite Direction (Aletejah Al-Moakes سكاعلما هاجتلاا) is a weekly TV programme presented by Dr Faisal Al-Qassem, a Syrian, who used to work for the BBC’s Arabic radio, before joining AJA TV (BBC News: 1999). He is a British national and studied journalism at a U.K. university (Cherribi: 2006).

Al-Qassem’s programme is different in structure and style from Mansour’s Without Borders, in that Aletejah Al-Moakes is a live, in-studio weekly programme (inspired by CNN’s famous Crossfire current events TV programme, Nawawy & Eskander: 2003) - hosting two guests, each with strong views from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The debates either focus on a particular political issue related to a certain country or on a pan-Arab matter. Mohammed Qarqouri (2014) observes that, soon after the programme begins, the discussion moves from its initial rational approach to screaming arguments, followed by a catalogue of verbal abuse and even physical attacks between the two guests.

The programme is arguably one of the most popular and controversial shows of its kind in the history of Arab television, and has attracted both endorsement and denunciation to Qatar, AJA’s host country (Democracy Now: 2006). Opposite Direction has managed to invite both wide approval

from Arab people and considerable condemnation from Arab governments (Dabbous-Sensenig: 2006).

Sam Cherribi (2006) explains that the presenter attempts to be ‘impartial’ when introducing each of the guests’ views at the beginning of the programme; during the discussions, however, he often overtly takes sides and therefore relinquishes his position as an ‘objective’ moderator. It is not unusual, according to Dabbous-Sensenig, for guests on the programme to begin shouting and having, what appear to be ‘temper tantrums’ (2006). The programme often been dominated by more by emotion and lack of ‘rationality’ (Abdelmoula: 2012, p. 184).

Brian Whitaker of The Guardian newspaper wrote that the secret of the programme’s popularity, according to the programme presenter, Al- Qassem, was that it broke all the Arab world’s taboos (Whitaker: 2003). Al- Qassem told Whitaker: ‘in the past, in the Arab world, you couldn’t even talk about the price of fish, because that might endanger national security, as far as the security services were concerned’. Al-Qassem mentioned the Algerian government as an example of the disapproval of his programme by some Arab states:

They cut off the electricity supply so that people could not watch the programme, because we were talking about the military generals and how they [were] wasting the money of Algerians (Whitaker: 2003).

The programme’s presenter frequently denounced Arab leaders whom he often negatively described as ‘symbols of corruption, backwardness, and tyranny (ةيعجرلاو دادبتسلااو داسفلا زومر) (Pintak: 2006: 165). Al-Qassem’s claims regarding the disconnection of electricity in Algeria being linked to his programme were unsubstantiated21.

Al-Qassem posted comments on his social media pages (Twitter and Facebook) on various political occasions, asking why the Yemeni government cut off the supply of electricity in Yemen, as soon as his programme started.22 This may have been coincidence, as power supplies in the Middle East are unreliable at the best of times, but it is argued here that the aim behind relating power cuts to the presenter’s controversial programme was to draw attention to it: he wanted to show that autocratic governments were afraid of the ‘freedom of expression’ (ريبعتلا ةيرح) that Al- Qassem and his guests adopted, and that it would encourage viewers and their friends to denounce such ‘undemocratic action’. Al-Qassem is a nationalist, unlike Mansour, who is allegedly an Islamist and said to be a member of the MB, and yet appears to support the MB, not from an Islamic ideology point of view, but more likely driven by his strong stand against authoritarian regimes.

21

Irregular electricity supply in the Middle East (and Africa, for that matter) occurs for many reasons – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21752819 [retrieved 28/12/2014]

22

The existing debates surrounding the programme are significant, yet lack the rigours of academic analysis which this research attempts to cover in this chapter. The presenter appeared to have strong views against dictatorships and favoured democracy. He seems to have viewed his programmes as ‘revolutionary’ which encouraged the value of freedom of expression and invited people to revolt against the symbols of backwardness and corruption, particularly regarding Arab regimes. The vision of bringing about democracy and freedom is, without doubt, widely debated in the Arab world. This Western concept, however, has torn the region apart and created chaos in the name of ‘freedom’ and immature democracy. It is interesting to observe how Al-Qassem, as a supposedly neutral moderator, presented different, often passionate views. The selection process he and his guests adopted for specific actions or events in order to credit or discredit one side or the other, are inspected through the lexical choices, representation of different actors, and the ideologies or values highlighted in the sample texts.

The presenter’s stance made his programme widely contentious, as the definition of the politically ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is a matter of opinion in the Arab world. The presenter’s political stance and the direction of the discussion will be examined as well as the nature of his questions, time allocated to each guest, and his provocative style.

The selection of data from the above TV programmes is primarily based on four key electoral moments (see Fig. 6 below) in which the MB participated. Each moment represents a different phase in a different political situation. The variability of this selection helps this research to obtain an understanding of AJA’s language before and after the Egyptian uprising.

Figure 6: Four targeted key electoral moments in Egypt

 2005: the MB participated in the parliamentary election as an opposition party and won 87 seats out of 444, which represented the MB as a challenging rival to Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP).

 2010: in the wake of the Arab uprisings, the two main opposition political parties (MB and Wafd) boycotted the second round of the 2010 parliamentarian election, declaring the existence of widespread fabrication in the first ballot. The final results showed

•2005

parliamentary and presidential elections. •2010

parliamentary and presidential elections.

Before the fall of Mubarak

•2012

parliamentary and presidential elections. •2014

Presidential elections.

After the fall of Mubarak

that the NDP won 83 per cent of the seats, which signalled the beginning of the end for Mubarak and his party.

 2012: following the fall of Mubarak, the MB’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won almost half of the parliamentary seats and was able to form a government. The FJP's then chairman, Mohammed Morsi, won the presidential election and became Egypt's first democratically-elected president, winning 51 per cent of the vote in a deeply divided run-off against retired military commander and former prime minister during Mubarak’s time, Ahmed Shafiq.

 2014: following the fall of FJB’s Morsi, most of MB leaders were arrested and the military chief, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, took command of running the country. Al-Sisi was appointed commander-in-chief of the armed forces in Mohammed Morsi’s government, and became the Egyptian president, nine months after taking over from Morsi. Morsi and other top MB leadership members were arrested, dozens of its supporters killed, and FJP was banned and dissolved.

The process of selecting the sampling episodes for analysis was based on two steps: shortlisting episodes of the two programmes directly linked to Egypt in four different years, as previously mentioned. This was done by reading the headlines of each episode and inner text, and using keywords directly referring to the four significant electoral periods of which the MB was part, for example, the parliamentary or presidential election (تاباختنلاا ةينالمربلا), Muslim Brotherhood (نيملسلما ناوخلاا), Islamic movements (تاكرحل ةيملاسلاا),

and opposition parties (ةضراعلما بازحا), and so on. Based on this process, this research identifies some 24 episodes (12 episodes in Without Borders, and 12 episodes in Opposite Direction) in the two selected programmes during four key electoral moments.

For Without Borders, each episode will be given a code and number in the text analysis: episode = (EP). Each episode will have a number (EP1 to EP12) in ascending order (see list of Without Borders episodes in Appendix 1.1); for example (EP1 = 26/10/2005 - Title: The expected political role of the MB in Egypt) and (EP12 = 7/05/2014 – Title: Yousef Nada: Egypt’s Coup will break from within the military), and so on (see Appendix 1.1).

A similar system will be applied to the second programme (Opposite Direction): each of the 12 selected episodes will have the same code (EP) and a number from (EP13 to EP24) in ascending order (see list of Opposite Direction’s episodes in 2.1); for example, (EP13 = 31/05/2005 – Title: The MB’s political activities in Egypt) and (EP23 = 20/05/2014 – Title: Will the issue of national security be used to scare people in Egypt?), and so on (see Appendix 2.1)

Some extracts of the actual episodes will be retrieved from the text as samples, in order to illustrate the main themes. Extracts will be given code ‘EX’ and a number, which will be either included within the actual text

analysis or reference made to it in the Appendix with extract numbers; for example, extracts taken from Without Borders programmes will be given a number (from EX1 to EX44) and extracts from Opposite Direction will be given a number from (EX1 to EX32) (see Appendix 1.2 and 2.2)

6.3 Interviews

A total of ten interviews with AJA TV presenters were obtained in this study: (six interviews with presenters currently working with AJA, (at the time of this research) and another four former AJ and AJ Egypt Live TV presenters (some who resigned over allegations of bias).

This research primarily targeted TV presenters (who were) working for AJA channels (the pan-Arab news channel ةيرابخلاا ةريزجلا and AJ’s Egypt Live رصم رشابم ةريزجلا). The process of selecting the interviewees was not an easy task and was mostly based on the availability of the AJA TV presenters and their consent to participate in this research. It was challenging to convince some of the presenters (inside and outside of AJA) to participate due to the complex political situation in the Arab world, as some of them explained.

The reason of interviewing high profile AJA TV presenters is because they were closely involved in covering Arab news in depth and were at the frontline, representing AJA’s editorial policies through reading the

newscasts, moderating interviews, and moderating talk-shows such as Without Borders and Opposite Direction.

A senior TV presenter, for example, Mohammed Krishan, in AJA TV (current presenter and interviewed in this research), was a member of the panel which designed AJA’s editorial guidelines. Others, such as Waddah Khanfar, former Director-General of AJA (interviewed in this research), was a decision-maker in determining the channel’s editorial stand in covering the uprisings before he decided to step down from the post. The unique access to such high profile presenters and the former director will certainly enrich this research and give in-depth testimonies in relation to different topics.

The ethical considerations were taken into account in this research regarding the interview process. It entailed approaching some of AJA presenters for their comments, and their written consent to use their testimonies. This research approached about 18 current and former presenters in AJA and AJ Egypt Live, of whom only ten agreed to participate while others either refused to participate or ignored the request.

Opposite Direction’s Faisal Al-Qassem (as key presenter for this study) was approached, but he stopped answering the telephone, despite promises of co-operation. Others, such as Without Borders’ Ahmad Mansour, requested that the questions should be sent to him by email;