When George Orwell worked for the BBC Eastern Services during the Second World War, he regarded it as 'an organ of colonial discourse propagating the word and world view of the metropolitan centre to its peripheral subject people' (Kerr, 2002: 473-90). Orwell's misgivings about his own journalistic practice and the BBC Eastern Service's suspected ideological functions may pose an enduring dilemma for some journalists, but many are delighted to endure the processes of recruitment, induction, training and enculturation into the BBC's hegemonic, globally diffused brand of impartial journalism. This is called, with some self-irony, 'being BBCed' by journalists working in, or for, Bush House. The BBC's overseas services (now the World Service) have long relied on an army of diasporic translators and 'the right kind of voice' to disseminate news across the globe. The long-standing reputation of the BBC World Service (BBCWS) among the world's pre-eminent broadcasters and its credibility have depended on the largely undocumented and unexplored everyday transcultural encounters and translation practices that have taken place in the diasporic and cosmopolitan contact zones of Bush House. This special issue draws on a collaborative empirical research project on the BBC World Service to examine wider issues of the politics, ethics and practices of transcultural journalism and the politics of translation. 1 Media Studies has been quite slow to wake up to issues of translation although there are some notable recent exceptions (Ang and Hawkins, 2008). It could be argued that all Journalism 12(2) 135-142
This overview attempts to place the region in wider historical and cultural contexts. The recent and rapid developments in media are discussed, while particular attention is paid to the dynamics of democratization, gender participation and Internet access in the Middle East.
An amusing and indicative sign of changing times, in December 2014 Saudi cleric Ahmad ʿAziz al-Ghamdi, a religious scholar and former head of the religious police in Mecca (officially known as the Committee for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice), ignited a fierce national debate regarding the niqab when he replied positively to a tweet by a Saudi woman asking if it was permissible in Islam for her to post a picture of her face on social media. His affirmative answer went viral and his Twitter feed received more than 10,000 comments, ranging from congratulations to death threats. He subsequently appeared on Badriya, the popular weekly TV talk show broadcast from Dubai, together with his wife, Jawahir bint Shaykh ʿAli, who appeared without a face veil and wearing make-up.
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