We have been witnessing a steadily increasing number of political analysts on our channels, especially since the outbreak of the so-called “Arab Spring”. This is, actually, a phenomenon that deserves attention, mainly as these people today contribute to the formulation of public opinion through the information they provide about a political or economic position, even by interfering in affairs of some countries. Or even in several cases, they leak intelligence information about behind-the-scenes political meetings and agreements, or possible military maneuvers and strikes in an area.

Here, Arab television has produced what looks like new elites made up of an army of analysts in various specialties and directions. They multiply at a tremendous speed on the screens, distributing their urgent opinions and revolting against other positions, shouting and hurling insults and exchanging accusations of treason, employment and dependence, or working as mouthpieces for the authority; they may even reach the point of a physical confrontation live.

This is how the Arab media succeeded in creating new elites whose main field is visual arenas for a 24-hour struggle, so that the viewer, in the meantime, is subject to the opinion of this analyst or the tendencies of that, without looking for real eligibility for dozens of programs that employ the opinions of these analysts in the interest of supporting the hypothesis of the agenda of this channel  or that, and in the end we arrive at what looks like “a television war” that has nothing to do with the objectivity of thinking or the logical analysis of events, as much as it is concerned in the end to give precedence to one opinion over another, no matter what it costs in terms of fabrications and falsification of facts and twisting “the neck of information.”

The problem today is that many of these analysts, who receive high salaries for their appearance on hot talk shows, have become the upper hand to perpetuate the policy of the channel, on whose pulpit they speak as they strongly belong to its propaganda. Especially when the channels host many “television thinkers” from a close political camp to discuss an issue, ignoring the opinion of analysts from the other side. It is strange that such channels still raise the slogan “the opinion and the other opinion” or the slogan “to know more,” while the viewer expects the guests of this or that program, and the strangest thing is that he memorized everything they would say as a result of the massive repetition of the station’s media message.

The opinions of this kind of “elites” cannot be relied upon, as it is known that television is always looking for what the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called “quick thinkers”.

 Bourdieu asks: “What makes these people think under the pressure of television time and the narrow space given to them between a jungle of programs and segments of news and advertising; except for that overwhelming desire for showmanship?”

The deception of the “television thinker” by the power and spread of television channels makes him/her a “good customer” and welcome on their screens, provided that s/he supports the station’s editorial policy with all kinds of media deception and justification of what cannot be justified.

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