The Revolution Will Soon Be Televised

Free Libya gets its own satellite channel, hosted by -- you guessed it -- Qatar.

BY BLAKE HOUNSHELL | MARCH 28, 2011

DOHA, Qatar—For the first time in its history, Libya is getting its own independent satellite channel.

A group of Libyans from abroad and inside the country is setting up the new station to broadcast news and commentary about Libya for a Libyan audience, with the aim of countering Libyan state propaganda and promoting dialogue about the country's future after Muammar al-Qaddafi, the brutal leader whose four-plus decades in power appear to be drawing to a rapid close.

The channel, to be called simply Libya TV, launches this week in Doha after less than two weeks of hurried preparation. Its founder is the avuncular Mahmud Shammam, a well-known Libyan expatriate journalist who edits Foreign Policy's Arabic edition.

Libya TV's initial team of 19 young staffers was assembled partly over Facebook, Shammam says. In mid-March, he put out a call for volunteers on his page and immediately got more than 200 requests to join. "One woman even said her life would mean nothing if she did not participate," Shammam told me. Another new staffer left Ajdabiya, an eastern city that until the last few days was occupied by Qaddafi's fighters, to join the network in Doha. The channel had to buy him a new set of clothes when he arrived.

Shammam, a staunch secularist, has long been an outspoken critic of Qaddafi's regime, dating back to his days as a student activist at Michigan State University, where he squared off against Qaddafi supporters led by Musa Kusa, now the regime's foreign minister and a key member of its inner circle. ("He's not stupid," Shammam says of Kusa. "He knows the regime is collapsing.")

Returning home to Libya after college, Shammam got into trouble after participating in the January 1976 student demonstrations in Benghazi, and left the country in March of that year, never to return. He has spent the years since as a journalist and activist, with stints at a number of different outlets, including nearly 10 years at the helm of Newsweek's Arabic edition. He's a frequent guest on Al Jazeera, where he was a board member for four years, and is close to Libyan opposition leaders both in and outside the country.

For the first month, Shammam hopes to broadcast four hours of original programming each day, including a 20-minute news bulletin and a half-hour talk show, and then extend it thereafter. He is keen to give Libya's young people, who have been at the forefront of the uprising, a prominent voice at the station. "The youth who liberate Libya can run it," he says. "If we don't let them take responsibility now, we're going to be in trouble."

According to Mohamed al-Akari, the new station's Tripoli-born manager, Libya TV has set up a studio in Benghazi and another in London, in addition to its headquarters in Doha, and has correspondents throughout Libya.

While editorially independent, the channel could prove an important outlet for the revolutionaries, especially if the drama of the uprising fades and the conversation shifts to less visually gripping topics like constitutional reform, political development, and education. International coverage of Tunisia and Egypt has dropped precipitously in the wake of the respective departures of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.

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