Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Article
Abstract
From 1934 to 1941, three British-governed radio stations were established in the Middle East: Egyptian State Broadcasting (ESB) in Cairo (1934), the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS) in Jerusalem (1936), and the Near East Broadcasting Service (NEBS) in Jaffa (1941). These three stations were modeled on the BBC and run as colonial or imperial stations – but they were also considered national stations. As a result, they operated as hybrid entities with overlapping and sometimes conflicting mandates.
Through three case studies – a contentious hire at the ESB, the PBS’ “Jerusalem Direct News Service”, and the NEBS’ Islamic broadcasts –, this article charts the evolving relationship between Great Britain and its Arab-world radio stations. Examining these three stations in tandem tension between national and regional broadcasting mandates, as well as the challenge that managing each station raised for British officials in the UK and in-country. It moves away from a focus on the disembodied spheres of ideology and propaganda, and toward the messy administrative decisions that reflected British officials’ on-the-ground efforts to navigate the administrative control and programming decisions in the perplexing world of semi-independent radio broadcasting stations in the Middle East. It closes by noting that while UK-based British officials saw these three stations as operating under the aegis of British governance and on the model of the BBC, the ESB and the PBS, in particular, reflected and projected not a British imperial identity but an Egyptian and a Palestinian nationalist one.
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Statement
Copyright held by the author or publisher. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Andrea L. Stanton
Provenance
Received from author
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
25 pgs
File Size
171 KB
Publication Title
Media History
Volume
19
First Page
1
Last Page
25
Recommended Citation
Stanton, A. L. (2013). Part of imperial communications: British-governed radio in the Middle East, 1934-1949. Media History, 19(4), 421-435. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2013.847141
DOI Link
https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2013.847141
Comments
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Media History on Oct. 15, 2013, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13688804.2013.847141.