Aggressiveness and deference in Arabic broadcast interviews

•Not only the content of Arabic interviews changed after the arrival of satellites.•The format of questions in Arabic independent channels has become more aggressive.•They are still, however, much more deferential than Western media.

Arab journalists and interviewers are often accused of taking a soft approach with officials and public figures on the government-controlled channels, addressing questions to them in an overly polite and cautious way. However, although some previous Arabic studies have pointed out that Arabic talk shows and interviews on the new independent channels have introduced new topics and expanded the limitations of several issues that were previously restricted in the state-owned sector, this shift needs to be investigated with empirical methods and compared to the practices used in Western media.After examining empirically the format of Arabic interviews, employing some methods from conversation analysis approach, the current paper found out that not only the content of these interviews has been expanded, but also the independent channels have provided a freer environment for their interviewers, allowing them to use higher levels of aggressiveness with officials and public figures. Their findings, however, did not reach the same level of aggressive questions that are found in some conversation analysis studies, conducted on Western journalistic questions.