Summary

“The Battle For The Arab Mind” opens with a description of the Ragab family sitting around their TV set in Cairo, Egypt. They are watching a talk show broadcast on Al-Jazeera, which is significant because the Ragabs have generally been skeptical of Arab media which they deemed unreliable, and instead had preferred CNN and BBC prior to Al-Jazeera’s appearance. El-Nawawy and Iskandar write that Al-Jazeera single-handedly has managed to convince many Arabs to watch its programming, encouraging satellite ownership to skyrocket as people spend their valuable money to gain access to the network’s news. Mohammed Jasim Ali-Ali, Al-Jazeera’s managing director, claims that the reason for the audience’s trust in Al-Jazeera is that “We treat them as intelligent, we give them the true story” (47).

El-Nawawy and Iskandar then examine data on the viewership of Al-Jazeera and...