alJazeera forum - Media and Power, Freedom of Expression and Political Manipulation

Media and Power, Freedom of Expression and Political Manipulation

Panelists
Christopher Dickey - Newsweek
Amy Goodman - Democracy Now
Faisal al Hassam - Exec Producer al Jazeera "The Opposite Direction"
Muhammad al Musfir - Qatar University
Ethan Zuckerman - Global Voices Online

This was one of the most dynamic debates so far, characterised by the exchanges between Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, who was as stunning as ever, and Christopher Dickey from Newsweek, who wasn't...

Dickey started off OK,
“What the US wants from the rest of the world is to forget about it. Americans want to think about their future in their country and pay as little attention as possible to the rest of the world.”

Asking what the US is doing trying to run the rest of the world, if they are not interested in it is fair comment, and he backed this up by citing the reductions in the levels of US Foreign correspondents over the last 20 years, suggesting that the US media, far from dominating is dying due to cutbacks.

This may well be the case, and it may well explain the paucity of US 'foreign' reporting, but for me it doesn't explain the quality, bias or self censorship of US news coverage...

Faisal al Kasim drew attention to the inherent failures of globalisation in bringing the world together, talking about the polarisation of debate that has resulted. Also the desperate efforts of the US to try and counter the failure of their mesage, or the reporting of that message leading to the rise of networks like al-Jazeera in the Middle East, and Telesur in South America. He talked about the fact Arabs living in the West are giving upon the Western media, and turning to Arab alternatives.

Muhammed al Musfir discussed the fact that people in the Middle East are chosing Arabisation, rather than Globalisation, and rejecting Western consumerism, and warned Arab stations about adopting the rhetoric of the west, suicide bomber rather than Martyr, insurgent rather than resistance fighter.

Joseph Samaha talked about the Lebanese experience, and the threats to journalists and reporting from direct attacks on reporters and newsmakers, and pressure from security services, also the charachter asassination of those who question the investigation into the death of Hariri. This in contrast to the the reputation Lebanon used to have for a free press.

Ethan Zuckerman, who carried on his live blogging of the forum from the platform, took the debate away from the arab vs west debate that has dominated the conference, and talked about the dearth of coverage of Sub Saharan Africa, talking about the relationship between news coverage and GDP, explaining that this relationship is so well defined, that GDP can be used to predict the news coverage a country recieves in the international media.

He argues, convincingly that News coverage is directly related to oppertunity, investnment and intervention. He discussed the failed attempts to address this over the years, and made an impassioned argument that citizen journalism or blogging is a vital tool in humanising the issues, and raising the profile of people and places that are traditionally neglected, something his organisation, GlobalVoicesOnline has been working towards for some time now.

And now to the star of the show, Amy Goodman. She spoke passionately, and at length about the failures of what passes for journalism amongst parts of the media today.
[I was so engrossed at this point, I stopped taking notes so I have lifted these quotes from Julia Day's piece in the media guardian and Ethan Zuckerman's coverage]

She berated the US media for falling into line with the neo con agenda, even by renaming Operation Iraqi Liberation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, thus avoiding the acronym O.I.L. that is derrived from the former.

Journalists should be at recieving end, not the safe end of the bombs and missiles,she said, refering to them as inbeds rather than embeds.

It was at this point that Chris Dickey, who had been obviously sulking throughout Amy's comments, got all indignant, moaning that she had talked for too long, that she, unlike himself was based in the US and had no experience of being on the recieving end of bombs, unlike himself, and that she had failed to mention journalists killed or kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq like Jill Carrol.

I have to say, that he came across as a petulant child, which is perhaps unfair, but speaking to people afterwards, that seemed to be the general view.

Amy countered by apologising for not mentioning Jill Carrol, who is still being held in Iraq under threat of execution, but stuck to her point, and held the audience.

There was more, but my notes run out at that point, it's 2 am and I need to sleep.

The forum finished tonight, and we are leaving the Sheraton tomorrow, and relocating to accomodation more befitting our station and pocket in downtown Doha.

We have plenty more to blog from the conference, and a couple more audio interviews to upload when we get back next week, including one with Dahr Jamail