iRevolution: CNN's own documentary on Bahrain's Arab Spring repression that its international arm refused to broadcast. Amber Lyon on CNN, commenting on the March 2011 repression in Bahrain A former CNN correspondent defies threats from her former employer to speak out about self-censorship at the network.
In late March 2011, as the Arab Spring was spreading, CNN sent a four-person crew to Bahrain to produce a one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region. Featuring on-air investigative correspondent Amber Lyon, the CNN team had a very eventful eight-day stay in that small, US-backed kingdom. By the time the CNN crew arrived, many of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Middle East Live. Jadaliyya.
The economics of the Arab Spring. After emergency laws are lifted, constitutions are drafted and elections are held, policymakers in the Middle East will be faced with a tough practical challenge: how to create economic opportunities for its teeming millions? Arab revolutions had a clear economic underpinning: they were fuelled by poverty, unemployment and lack of economic opportunity. At the heart of these uprisings is a search for social and economic justice. While political repression in the Middle East remains a subject of continuous discussion in media and academic circles, the scale and intensity of the region’s economic repression has gone relatively unnoticed.