Noise that kills the truth

The toxic exchanges between Saudi, Emirati and Yemeni journalists, as well as ‘citizen reporters,’ concerning the Yemen crisis, are not merely a heated debate. They are a symptom of a deeper problem: an Arab media landscape that has lost its ability to generate knowledge, instead operating on instinct rather than reason. What unfolded was not political analysis, but rather a collapse disguised in the language of nationalism, turning Yemen into a theatre of shouting rather than a subject to be understood.
Amid this chaos, Senior Diplomatic Adviser to the United Arab Emirates president Anwar Gargash posted a striking message on X: “Media professionalism is the first casualty of every crisis in the region. Words carry responsibility … and if your discourse cannot rise to the occasion, then do not let it explode.”
This is more than advice. It is an implicit indictment of a media culture that has chosen verbal detonation over professional elevation.
I met Gargash years ago at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. Even then, he was more interested in cultural dialogue than in polarisation. Today, when he diagnoses the crisis, he does so from a position of political and intellectual experience, not as a distant observer. However, can a single voice make a difference in a sea of noise, especially when the media has lost the ‘moral distance’ that American media theorist Jay Rosen says is essential?
Rosen, one of the strongest advocates for journalism that serves citizenship and improves public discourse, recently said on his Rebooting the News podcast, “Journalism loses its meaning when it loses the distance that separates it from both power and the public.”
This is precisely what happened in the recent Gulf dispute. Rather than acting as instruments of accountability, journalists became extensions of official narratives. The public became fuel for the fight rather than partners in understanding. Platforms turned into arenas of tribal vengeance rather than spaces for deliberation.
The ethical distance that gives journalism its meaning has vanished, replaced by a primal alignment that eliminates any possibility of comprehension. As the Canadian philosopher and media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, “Noise does not conceal the truth-;- it kills the ability to see it.”
In today’s Arab world, the medium, saturated with shouting and polarisation, has become the message itself. The message tells the audience that truth does not matter, that emotion is more important than understanding and that loyalty outweighs professionalism.
The Arab world is being reshaped by angry broadcasters, agitated audiences and governments that prefer not to be questioned. This is why Gargash warned against “explosive speech.”
Years earlier, Neil Postman, author of “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” warned that modern media transforms culture and public discourse into shallow entertainment, rendering seriousness and in-depth debate almost impossible. He reminded us that George Orwell’s fear of censorship through oppression could be replaced by something more insidious: censorship through pleasure, triviality and, today, rage.
This is exactly what Arab media has become. It replaces analysis with mockery, context with insults and depth with factionalism. It is political entertainment, not journalism. It is lethal entertainment because it stifles critical thinking and reduces existential issues to spectacles of noise.
The ‘citizen journalists’ are not innocent either. They are both the victim and the executioner of public dialogue. In the West, scholars have long debated the impact of digital platforms on journalism. But in the Arab world, it is not merely weakened-;- it has died. Instead of expanding the circle of knowledge, the citizen journalist has become a transmitter of insults, a manufacturer of rumours and an accomplice in the killing of public discourse.
Thus, the Arab media has been killed twice: once by governments that wanted to neuter the press, and again by audiences that wanted to dumb it down.
Financial Times writers regularly issue warnings about the ‘crisis of trust’ and the ‘erosion of professionalism’ in Western media. Analysts in The New York Times publish essays on the ‘politicisation of truth’ and the ‘collapse of the public sphere.’
However, the difference between their crisis and ours is stark and frightening. They are debating a professional crisis. We are experiencing an existential one. They fear losing their audience. We have already lost our audience, the truth and the ethical -function- of journalism.
Whereas Jürgen Habermas based his theory of the ‘public sphere’ on rational, open debate. What we are seeing in the Arab world today is the exact opposite: a collapsed public sphere that is dominated by emotion and where the distinction between opinion and information, and between analysis and incitement, has disappeared. The digital space has become a battlefield of identities rather than a marketplace of ideas. Every political discussion is reduced to a test of loyalty. Every disagreement is treated as betrayal. Any attempt at understanding is perceived as alignment.
Such an environment cannot produce knowledge. It requires a space that encourages questions, not one that punishes them. Consequently, Arab media becomes part of the problem rather than the solution, and the toxic Yemen debate is a prime example of a public sphere in collapse, where truth is drowned out by noise.
The crisis is further deepened by the absence of institutional structures that protect the profession from blind loyalty´-or-reckless anger. Journalism is not just individuals shouting on platforms-;- it is a system of values, editorial institutions and professional norms that have been built up over decades. Despite polarisation, newsrooms in the West still maintain mechanisms of review, verification and internal accountability. Universities still train journalists to understand that truth is not an opinion and that emotion is not a position. In the Arab world, however, institutions have been hollowed out and journalists have been reduced to employees of political machines´-or-numbers in digital choruses.
Analysis is replaced by noise. Loyalty replaces professionalism. Instinct replaces thought. The absence of institutions allows speech to explode and truth to be buried under the rubble.
Echoing Gargash’s warning, the question that must now be asked is not: who is right in the Saudi-Emirati dispute over Yemen?
But, who remains capable of telling the truth without becoming part of the noise?
Arab media does not merely need ‘balance’, as Gargash suggests. It must reinvent itself, restoring ethical distance and reclaiming the ability to generate ideas rather than hostility.
Truth does not die from noise. But journalism does, when it abandons its courage.

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