Shock Me Harder

Newspapers, TV Stations and Websites are all screaming very loudly for our attention. The trick is to know the difference between good and bad sensationalism.

I’m sure all of you browsing through the Lebanese/Arab news outlets are noticing strange things happening: Alarbiya’s website is now having a story-du-jour about sex. (My favorite being the one where an Imam issues a fatwa condemning Muslims who have sex with all their clothes off. Apparently, that entitles the wife to a divorce). Albalad, A Lebanese Newspaper, has abandoned its broadsheet format for the scrawny tabloid look, complete with the dramatic combinations of striking imagery and headlines. New TV, a Lebanese satellite T.V. station has exhausted all metaphors, similes, dramatizations, hyperboles that could be available to the Arabic language. Their news bulletins are sounding more like ancient Greek epics (I’m wondering what’s next, background music?). Lebanon’s Future TV has set up a show called “Sabaya”, in which a bunch of very attractive young ladies chat away the 30 minutes just before the news bulletin (coincidence?). Naharnet, an offspring of the rather stern Annahar (a Lebanese newspaper), has once headlined: “Northern High Noon Showdown Decides Who Will Rule Lebanon”.

Increased competition and cheaper access to other news sources is the basic cause of this newfound attention-seeking. But are these attempts a senseless assault on news objectivity, or a legitimate instrument of marketing? The answer is: It depends.

I would differentiate between two kinds of approaches: the first is restructuring News, where a bolder format is adopted, but the content remains intact. The second is the Sugar-coated pill approach, where you surround news with sex and freebies.

Aljazeera’s new website structure and Albalad’s new Tabloid format are good examples of the first kind. Both outlets realized that in a world with too much information, readers will be attracted to simple covers with loud messages and convenient access. I personally am a fan of the new Albalad, it’s much easier to read in crowded spaces.

But the moral problem lies squarely in the second approach. where a sex-sells strategy is shamelessly being used to promote otherwise serious coverage. It reduces respectability, but it works so well people will often ignore mediocre and subjective content.

It is sad that news providers that have actually lost journalists in duty, would have to use such cheap tricks to get their messages across. Before they’ll know it, they’ll become just another Elaph.