In February, Al Arabiya celebrated five years on air by opening a state-of-the-art newsroom at its Dubai headquarters. The giant, circular room is scattered with studios and wrapped in a continuous, four-foot-high digital screen that changes in lock step with each broadcast.

The pan-Arab satellite TV channel has earned a reputation for breaking fast-moving news stories. (Along the way it has been banned in Qatar, and twice in Iraq.) But it’s just one among an exploding number of stations on the crowded Middle East airwaves. Last year, there were more than 400 satellite channels that viewers in the region could choose from.

Considering that two decades ago, television in the Middle East consisted mostly of government announcements and state-sanctioned political speeches, it would be hard to understate the impact that satellite broadcasting has had in this part of the world.

In February, information ministers from the Arab League met in Cairo and ironically recognized the industry’s now-formidable influence in the region by adopting a set of regulations to rein in companies like Al Arabiya.

The new rules were proposed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and all but two of the League’s 22 members endorsed them. They’ve called the resulting document Principles for Regulating Satellite Broadcasting Transmission In the Arab World, and they’ve included several clauses that governments could use to punish TV channels if their content is deemed too critical or controversial.

Programs are to avoid “jeopardizing social peace, national unity, public order and general propriety,” the document reads. Broadcasts should eschew free expression in favor of “protection of the supreme interests of Arab countries and the Arab world,” preserve “respect for the dignity and national sovereignty of states and their people,” and avoid insulting political leaders.

The international press seized on the story, publishing concerned reactions by pan-Arab broadcasters and interest groups. “Media institutions should be watching governments, not the other way around,” Ahmed Shaikh, news editor at Al Jazeera, told Reuters.

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) went a bit further, calling the charter draconian. “These regulations are not only repressive, but they are also retrograde,” the Paris-based press freedom lobby said in a statement. “The Arab League information ministers have banded together to put pressure on news media that have been annoying them and escaping their control.”

Thirty-four human rights and free expression organizations within Arab League countries banded together to decry the proposed rules, because they “would impose new restrictions on freedom of expression,” according to a statement released by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

Perhaps more importantly, they argued the proposed rules are invalid until Arab parliaments affirm them. Anas al-Fiqi, Egypt’s minister of information, fired back. The regulations are “not aimed at restricting freedom of the media,” he said, “but rather to organize it at a time when satellite channels are spreading ignorant [messages] and illegitimate religious edicts.”

Then at the end of February, Egypt’s satellite communications firm, NileSat, dropped al-Baraka TV, sparking rumors it had become the first victim of the new regulations. For now, however, the dust seems to have settled.

And in the bigger picture, little has changed. BBC television, which launched its Arab-language service on March 11, says it’s business as usual.

“We have seen nothing to indicate that the charter is directed at serious news channels with robust editorial guidelines to support impartiality and editorial independence,” Mike Gardner, head of the organization’s media relations, told TRENDS.

Al Arabiya isn’t worried either, partly for practical reasons. “I believe strongly that they have no way, whatsoever, to implement these regulations,” says Nasser Alsarami, the company’s director of media, because satellite broadcasting and Internet streaming technologies have pushed television newscasts safely out of the reach of government controls.

“My concern is about the philosophy they are bringing to the market,” he cautions. “If the Arab League is trying to block the Arab media from going forward, there is a problem with the Arab League itself.”

But the MENA neighborhood has never been a bastion of free expression, and neither is the Arab League. In Reporters Without Borders’ annual press-freedom report, only six of the organization’s 22 members cracked the top 100 last year (the highest ranking was Mauritania, in fiftieth position behind Togo).

Given the League’s reputation for fecklessness, many commentators were less surprised that it had reached an anti-democratic agreement, than it had reached any agreement at all. “It’s basically saying these have been our practices, and these are going to continue to be our practices as we attempt to apply them to the regional satellite media,” says Joe Stork, head of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East arm.

“They want to squelch this. They want to send a signal and say: ‘Watch your step, we may get together again and figure out how to implement this.’” But putting the regulations into effect region-wide may prove impos-sible. Viewers in the Middle East have grown accustomed to choosing harder-hitting private news stations over uninteresting, state-run channels.

“In simple terms, the genie is out of the bottle now and they cannot put it back,” says Jamal Dajani, a media analyst and director of Middle East programming at San Francisco-based satellite broadcaster Link TV.

Companies like Dajani’s won’t give up the Arab world’s 100 million viewers without a fight, especially if they’re based outside of Arab League territory. The BBC, which is sinking $40 million a year into its new Arab-language TV service, must believe competing for those viewers is worth the headaches.

The League, which did not respond to repeated interview requests for this story, will face its next test in June when ministers of information convene in Jordan.

They’re expected to release details about suggested penalties for charter violations, as well to set up a commission to oversee implementation. But before dealing with the nuts and bolts of putting these new restrictions into force, they will first have to shore up support from member states.

And in spite of its mandate to encourage pan-Arab cooperation, the Arab League has become infamous for its disunity. Qatar, the headquarters of Al Jazeera, chose to abstain from the vote on whether to adopt the charter. And Lebanon’s information minister has said publicly that his government won’t enforce the new rules. (The country’s television market consists almost entirely of private companies with ties to competing political parties, rather than to the state.)

“It does set a precedent to encourage individual countries that are already meddling with broadcast laws,” Dajani warns. “But if anyone can name the last [Arab League] resolution that was enforced, I would be very surprised. … It’s just going to backfire, and they’re going to face more criticism.”

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