In this battle, governments are often caught flat-footed. Long devoid of any ability to inspire their citizens, government information bureaucracies are losing audiences to the provocative, audacious and titillating fare of alternative outlets. The death of Arab information bureaucracies is not all good news for Western interests. Some of what people find exciting is virulently anti-Western. In addition, many Arab consumers find tabloid journalism as seductive as their Western counterparts do, and that hardly seems destined to raise the level of political debate.
Demagoguery plays well on television, offering easy answers to difficult problems.
The biggest problem may be with the very idea that television has a mission civilatrice in a region where democracy has had such difficulty establishing itself. One change we are almost certain to see is the rise of a new Arabism which emerges from the bottom up rather than the top down. As Arabs increasingly read and watch the same information in the same language, they can t help but share an increasingly unitary common culture. If you are not sure what I mean, ask any Canadian, many of whom may be lurking silently among us today. This new Arabism is not necessarily bad for American interests, but it certainly can be.