Since the 1970s the UK capital has been the home of the Arab media’s dissenting voices. But now, amid a Saudi and Qatar squabble, the press crackles with opinions, anger and propaganda.
With a mission to track down, restore and share images of day-to-day life in the region, a valuable social history of the Arab world is being chronicled by the Beirut-based Arab Image Foundation. Monocle travels to Lebanon…
‘Paris Match’ scores regular exclusives thanks to an army of reporters and photographers who mix celebrity with hard-edged news. Monocle meets the Paris-based team.
Qatar’s Al-Jazeera Arabic news network has enjoyed as rocky a relationship with the US as the region from which it hails. Abderrahim Foukara, the station’s New York and Washington bureau chief and managing editor, is the…
As a wave of uprisings and revolutions have swept across North Africa and the Middle East, one news channel has been at the heart of the action. From Egypt to Libya, Al Jazeera’s reporting has had a major influence on…
Lebanese journalist Hisham Melhem has been a correspondent for many of the Middle East’s largest newspapers and now presides over TV station Al Arabiya’s Washington bureau. He talks to Monocle about covering a winter of…
Al Jazeera has become the must-watch news channel for the unrest in the Middle East. But it is also a potent soft power weapon that the channel’s owner, the Emir of Qatar, is happy to wield. Monocle travels to the headqu…
Every city has a local media star – perhaps a television anchor, newspaper columnist, singer or author – who is part of its very fabric. Content with staying on home turf, they are an institution, breaking down the anoma…
Deutsche Welle broadcasts TV and radio and in 30 languages worldwide. Established in 1953, today the public broadcaster is more important than ever – as a tool for public diplomacy.
To counter dipping audience figures and falling advertising revenues, TV news increasingly offers a diet of soft stories, banal banter and Identikit blondes. Who is to blame, a public unwilling to engage with global affairs…
Until now there has not been a dedicated, unbiased Farsi-speaking TV station broadcasting in Iran. That’s about to change with the launch of the BBC World Service’s Persian TV. It aims to put a new spin on the country and…
The burgeoning soft power of the nation that straddles the East-West divide is rooted in its flourishing drama production industry, capturing hearts and minds from Pakistan to South America. Just don’t call them soap operas…
There is plenty of music in the Middle East but how do you hear it? Two entrepreneurs are launching English-language platform Dandin to help promote talent in the region; from protest songs to perfect pop, it’s an online…
Despite our constantly changing reading habits, there’s still a place for printed independent magazines. Monocle met some pioneering editors and publishers who are not afraid to risk it all in order to tell the stories they…