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The Arabic Hour: Understanding Arab-American Media Activism and Community-Based Media

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The Arabic Hour: Understanding Arab-American Media Activism and Community-Based Media The Arabic Hour: Understanding Arab-American Media Activism and Community-Based Media A thesis submitted by Noah Elias Habeeb In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning TUFTS UNIVERSITY February 2018 ADVISER: Barbara Parmenter READER: Thomas Abowd Abstract This thesis investigates the Boston-based community access television program the Arabic Hour. For 37 years the Arabic Hour has produced television programs that have aired first on cable television, then on public access television, and now on the Internet. This thesis contextualizes the Arabic Hour within Arab-American history as well as the history of community-based, ethnic, and activist medias. Through approaches of participatory action research, as well as semi-structured interviews with members of the volunteer production staff, guests, and one funder of the show, this thesis discerns how the Arabic Hour was (un)able to build political power and community empowerment, while also presenting conclusions on Arab-American transnational identity formation, journalistic approaches of alternative media, and the alternative approach of “for them, by us” ethnic media. ii Acknowledgments This thesis is a result of collaborative work between Tufts students, Tufts professors, and the Arabic Hour volunteer staff. I would be remiss not to acknowledge those involved with the Arabic Hour who took the time to be interviewed for this project, in particular Nabih Hakim and Toufic Tannous who were always present in the studio when I visited and have led the Arabic Hour digitalization project. I’m grateful for Professor Thomas Abowd who introduced me to the Arabic Hour, collaborated with me as a Summer Scholar researcher, and helped me to develop my thinking and writing. I’m also very thankful for Barbara Parmenter, who guided me through this thesis and over every administrative hurdle of the last two years as the BA/MA program began. Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the financial support of the Undergraduate Research Fund, Summer Scholars Fund, and the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. And most importantly, my parents for their endless support and incisive edits. iii Table of Contents I. Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 The Arabic Hour: An Arab-American Institution ........................................................................ 1 Researching the Arabic Hour ............................................................................................................... 2 Arriving at the Arabic Hour (in More Ways Than One) ........................................................... 4 II. Historical Context and Background: Arab-American Identity and Media ..... 13 Arab-American Identity ....................................................................................................................... 13 Arab-American Media ........................................................................................................................... 18 III. Community, Ethnic, and Activist Medias: A Review of the Literature ......... 25 Community Media ................................................................................................................................... 25 Ethnic Media ............................................................................................................................................. 31 Activist Media ........................................................................................................................................... 36 IV. Methods and Research Approaches ........................................................... 40 Participatory Action Research .......................................................................................................... 41 Archival Methods ..................................................................................................................................... 43 Observation ................................................................................................................................................ 44 Semi-Structured Interviews ................................................................................................................ 47 Autoethnography .................................................................................................................................... 50 Limitations ................................................................................................................................................. 51 V. “The Whole Arab American Existence”: Watching The Arabic Hour ............. 52 VI. “To Tell Our Stories Ourselves”: Findings from Interviews ......................... 75 Founding Influences ............................................................................................................................... 75 Role and Mission ...................................................................................................................................... 81 Culture and the Political ...................................................................................................................... 86 Articulations of Arabness .................................................................................................................... 90 Political Power and Community Empowerment ....................................................................... 91 VII. Conclusions .............................................................................................. 99 The Arabic Hour and Arab-American Identity ........................................................................ 100 The Arabic Hour as Alternative Media ....................................................................................... 102 The Arabic Hour’s Success, Potential and Limitations ........................................................ 107 VIII. Bibliography .......................................................................................... 113 iv I. Introduction The Arabic Hour: An Arab-American Institution For over 37 years the Arabic Hour, based in the Boston area, has produced English-language television programs focusing on Middle East politics, the question of Palestine, U.S. foreign policy, and Arab-American culture. Airing on cable television, public access television, and on the Internet, the Arabic Hour was broadcast throughout New England, including all of Rhode Island, parts of Maine, and Massachusetts before becoming more widely accessible online. For a period the program also aired in other cities throughout the country, like San Francisco, Washington, and Detroit. Started in 1982 as a half-hour program appended to an Indian-American program, titled “Asian Entertainment,” the Arabic Hour quickly became a one- hour program focusing exclusively on Arab-American issues and current events in the Middle East. In producing media on these topics, the Arabic Hour has consistently been a voice of criticality and scholarship; guests on the show have included Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Ilan Pappe, Moustafa Bayoumi, and others similarly known for both the quality of their scholarship and their dedication to political engagement. For decades, led by Professor Emerita Elaine Hagopian, interviews on the program have been conducted with scholarly rigor, delving deeply into issues that are typically only touched on by mainstream media sources. As a result, the Arabic Hour archives are filled with interviews, event coverage, and documentaries that constitute, as one interviewee told me, “the 1 whole Arab American existence,” an impressive and noteworthy feat for a humble community access television program. The Arabic Hour began production in the bedroom of a Roxbury home, before moving production to an incomplete Roxbury building, which in 1994 the Boston Globe described as “a barn with no running water.”1 For the last seven years, however, the show has been produced at Arts at the Armory, a community arts center in Somerville, MA owned by Joseph and Nabil Sater, two Boston-area Lebanese-American businessmen and financial supporters of the show. Through the decades the show has changed not just location, but form and content. Still, the show has always been, and continues to be, a critical and alternative voice on the Middle East and issues of concern to Arab-Americans. This thesis project, in the spirit of Foucault’s analysis of subjugated knowledges, seeks to lift up the Arabic Hour while asserting that the program, and others of its kind, is not only worthy of study, but also essential to the study of alternative media and Arab-American public culture.2 Researching the Arabic Hour This thesis is in part inspired by these early experiences and observations at the Arabic Hour, and designed to investigate questions that will help to 1 Betsy Q.M. Tong, “Arabic Hour finds its niche,” Boston Globe (Boston, MA), Feb. 13, 1994. 2 Michel Foucault, in his “Two Lectures,” refers to subjugated knowledges as, in one sense, “a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity” (1980, 82). This thesis project is based on the fundamental assertion that community access television programs like the Arabic Hour constitute, as Foucault says of subjugated knowledges, “historical
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