ABSTRACT
Where governments come to power by means other than the ballot box and remain there without public endorsement, they have a problem of missing legitimacy on their hands. One way to manufacture this vital asset is to delegitimise past regimes by casting them as rogues and traitors or, at least, inept and corrupt (Shaaban 1990: 61-2). Another is to smear current opponents as a threat to national security and stability (Sakr 2003). Such a process of false legitimisation, all too obvious in the Arab world, wreaks havoc with both historiography and news reporting. Accounts of the past are either suppressed or turned to the incumbent regime’s advantage, while public records of the present are distorted to extol the supposed virtues of those who control access to the reporting process. In these circumstances the essentialist suppositions and ill-informed assumptions that have become entrenched in Western media coverage of Arab societies (Said 1981) have been able to circulate globally with no credible challenge or rebuttal mounted by Arab media or historians (Karim 2002: 106).
