New Bahrain-Based Channel Suspends Service After Opposition Leader Gets Airtime

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But less than a day after it began, the channel suspended broadcasting, apparently forced to stop by the authorities in Bahrain after it gave airtime to an opposition leader who criticized a recent government decision.
“The broadcast has been stopped for technical and administrative reasons and we’ll be back soon, God willing,” the channel said on its Twitter feed.
The truncated debut of Al Arab’s broadcast is the most recent collision of the efforts by the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf to portray themselves as open to the outside world while drastically limiting freedom of speech and political rights at home.
With economies powered by petroleum wealth, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have opened branches of world-class universities, founded museums and welcomed international leaders to speak at conferences.
They are also allies of the United States in its bombing campaign against the extremists of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and most host large American military bases.
But domestically, the monarchs limit or outlaw political opposition and often use legislation intended to fight cybercrime and terrorism to incarcerate citizens who criticize their governments.
The region’s satellite networks also reflect the region’s politics. Although all say they provide balanced news, they all have wealthy backers and the differences in their orientations are clear to viewers.
Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar and financed by its royal family, frequently gives airtime to political Islamists and continues to cover protests by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya shows little sympathy for the Brotherhood while heavily covering the fight of Syria’s rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Other stations, like the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen, give more coverage to Iran’s Arab allies, like Mr. Assad and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party.
In an interview before the launch of Al Arab, the general manager, Jamal Khashoggi, said the channel would seek to steer a middle path.
“We are going to be neutral, we are not going to take sides,” he said. “We are going to bring in all sides in any conflict because right now we have a conflict in almost every Arab country.”
Mr. Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist who interviewed Osama bin Laden decades ago, has edited Saudi newspapers and has advised government officials, said the channel had a staff of more than 260, with bureaus in Cairo; Beirut, Lebanon; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Riyadh; and Jidda, Saudi Arabia, as well as reporters in New York, London and other cities.
He did not disclose the channel’s budget but said it was backed by the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire investor who had agreed to finance the channel for 10 years.
Mr. Khashoggi said the channel would carry international content but focus on Saudi Arabia because of the size of its market. It is based in Bahrain because Saudi Arabia does not permit independent news channels, while Bahrain does.
“We are allowed to operate freely from here,” Mr. Khashoggi said.
The channel’s launch on Sunday afternoon came one day after Bahrain announced that it had revoked the citizenship of 72 Bahrainis on charges that ranged from supporting or engaging in terrorism to “defaming brotherly countries” and “inciting and advocating regime change through illegal means.”
Al Arab aired a segment on the decision and interviewed Khalil al-Marzouq, a former member of Bahrain’s Parliament and a senior leader in al-Wefaq, the country’s largest opposition party representing the Shiite majority. Since 2011, when Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy, with help from Saudi Arabia, violently suppressed a Shiite-led uprising, even mainstream opposition figures like Mr. Marzouq have come to be regarded by the government as threats to the state.
“When we talk about revoking citizenship, that is a human right for any human who lives in a given land,” Mr. Marzouq said on Al Arab. “So when we revoke that citizenship, you are making absent the legal personality of that person in his daily, official and other dealings.”
He also asked, “Are there laws and judges, or are there political decisions?”
Early Monday, Al Arab’s programming stopped and the channel carried only promotional material.
An article Monday by Bahrain’s state news agency cited Yousef Mohammed of Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority as saying that programming had been “temporarily suspended for administrative and technical purposes” and that it was expected to resume soon.
Joe Khalil, an associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar who studies Arab media, said in an email that Bahrain had long sought to balance commercial interests, national security and power struggles within the country.
He expected that the authorities would seek an arrangement to put the channel back on the air.
“It is increasingly evident that negotiations are underway to find common ground between the channel’s urging toward ‘balance’ and the country’s economic, political and cultural interests,” Mr. Khalil said.
But the channel clearly angered some Bahrainis.
In an article in the daily newspaper Akhbar al-Khaleej, the editor Anwar Abdel-Rahman chastised Al Arab for welcoming a guest he called “extreme to the core” and accused it of failing its duties.
Such broadcasts “will harm you in the eyes of the Arab viewer faster than you imagine,” he wrote. “And more than that, your failure may have started the day you were born!”

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