Business and Financial News in the Arab World

This book explores how journalists in the Middle East and North Africa report financial and business issues. It examines the diversity of news cultures, news values and reporting practices that take place and assesses the degree of professional autonomy that journalists are able to exercise in the context of each one of these societies.

The book is based on empirical research in several countries, including Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar and triangulates different qualitative and quantitative methods, adopting a mixed-methods strategy. Including content analysis of MENA newspapers, semi-structured interviews, which were conducted with journalists and editors who work with the same newspapers used for the content analyses, the findings confirm that news reporters face tremendous obstacles in the region. However, many of these challenges are not primarily due to the political and religious contexts in which they operate, as one might expect, but rather to some of the same reasons that underpin similar limitations in the West; that is, being too close to their corporate sources and there being a general lack of expertise and skills.