The change of government in Israel has resulted in a change in Israeli TV. One dramatic example: the network aired its first-ever interview with Yasir Arafat earier this year, as readers of "A Sea Change on the Airwaves" (CJR, March/April) learned.

Meanwhile, at about the same time, a new Arab network was broadcasting another first: an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the significance of the Middle East Broadcast Center (MBC) -- backed by Saudi money, operated by Arab and British journalists, and sponsored by Western advertisers -- goes beyond this exercise in television diplomacy. MBC may also be starting a communications revolution in the Arab world and, by opening a full-time bureau in Israel, helping to break down the psychological barriers between Arabs and Israelis.

Ehud Yaari, Israeli Television's Middle East analyst, calls MBC "CNN in Arabic." While CNN reaches only a small viewership in the Arab world, MBC, which went on the air in September 1991 as the only truly international Arabic-language, satellite-carried television network, can reach tens of millions of Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as six million Arab-speaking viewers in Europe.

MBC's high-tech and pop-culture-oriented menu includes Michael Jackson, New Kids on the Block, and fashion tips, as well as half-hour news shows that consist of about twenty stories filed by reporters in the major Middle Eastern and Western capitals -- that dominates the Arab press. The stories are presented by a relatively large contingent of female reporters and anchors -- newsworthy in itself when it comes to Arabic-language TV.

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