Who owns Arab Media? The answer is simple

In Baghdad, a TV anchor s chair doesn’t move without the party’s command. The camera stays off until a militia man in the backroom gives the signal. Everything is fake - even the news bulletins, read like death notices written in the language of power.
This isn’t poetic exaggeration. It’s the daily reality of Iraqi media, operating under the umbrella of what many call “satellite storefronts”- channels politicians label as “media,” while free journalists recognize them as collective disappointments. There’s no ceiling to vulgarity, as long as the funding comes from a politician´-or-a merchant dreaming of a seat in parliament.
Across the Arab world, journalism is bought, trained, and then published. And what’s published is not the truth - but what power permits to be said.
"When journalism collapses before money, truth becomes a moral option most are willing to ignore," wrote Margaret Sullivan, before retiring her column at The Washington Post. A free press isn’t just about the ability to publish - it’s about saying what the government doesn’t want to hear.
But in Baghdad - and in many Arab capitals - this privilege simply doesn’t exist. Allegiances are bought, news -script-s are fabricated, and soft terror is practiced on journalists - whether through starvation´-or-a stray bullet.
In Iraq alone, full broadcasting studios operate from within militia headquarters. There, the news is written and handed to audiences in the form of political sermons. Anyone refusing this theater ends up unemployed -´-or-buried.
The Guardian put it bluntly: “Journalism in the Middle East bows more to the will of power than to the will of truth.” This isn’t generalization - it’s the result of hundreds of cases of censorship, bans, dismissals, and, sometimes, assassination.
Everything in Arab media is governed by the rules of political, sectarian, and party-based funding. Whoever finances it, owns it. That’s why we’re left with a hybrid scene: journalism wrapped in the banner of freedom, but in truth, a parrot mimicking governments and appeasing militias.
"What frightens authority isn’t the opposing opinion, but the independent journalist," wrote David Ignatius in The Washington Post. This is why Arab channels are filled with names that lack substance, and why the profession is stripped of its meaning.
In the West, journalism exists within a protective ecosystem. In the East, it suffers under a political system that kills it every day. In Britain, the journalist is seen as society’s voice. In Iraq, he is seen as an employee of whoever pays his salary.
Yet, absurd things have happened in the West too - shaking the foundations of its own media. Journalism there has become a confusing space where the profession occasionally fires bullets into its own feet.
Ask a reader of American´-or-British newspapers today what they expect, and they’ll likely speak of a lost truth. Like millions around the globe, they just want it back.
Still, we journalists cannot erase politicians from the news simply because they don’t suit our mood, our editorial line,´-or-our governments. According to the ethical roots of journalism, the media should never become a playground for selfish fantasies.
Thus, fear and anger have become the dominant political emotions in the world’s biggest democracies. And the media has not been innocent in amplifying this dangerous shift - turning emotions more primal, and less attractive. This threatens the very idea of democracy that the media claims to defend.
Such a descent into primitive emotion is worrying, as Martin Wolf writes in The Financial Times. Because these emotions are hard to contain. “Democracy,” he says, “is at its core a civilized form of civil war - a struggle for power managed by institutions and understandings.”
Wolf adds: “The stronger the emotions and the narrower the ambitions, the more likely the democratic system will collapse into autocracy. Demagogues are fatal to democracy.”
And so the war for truth becomes poisoned by toxic division. The world is confused. Public trust in the media has eroded. But this remains a war to preserve the idealism of journalism - just as it is a battle for the survival of genuine democracy.
When journalism breaks under money, it loses its value. It becomes something else - propaganda, entertainment,´-or-silent obedience.
So, the question remains:
Who owns Arab media?
The answer is simple. Whoever owns power.

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