Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05DOHA1803
2005-11-02 10:41:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Doha
Cable title:  

MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA MEDIA TRAINING CENTER

Tags:  PREL KPAO KMPI QA ALJAZEERA 
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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DOHA 001803 

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP
INFO NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE
TUNIS AND ABU DHABI FOR MEPI OFFICE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL KPAO KMPI QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA MEDIA TRAINING CENTER
DIRECTOR

REF: DOHA 1786 AND PREVIOUS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DOHA 001803

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP
INFO NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE
TUNIS AND ABU DHABI FOR MEPI OFFICE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL KPAO KMPI QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA MEDIA TRAINING CENTER
DIRECTOR

REF: DOHA 1786 AND PREVIOUS


1. (SBU) Summary: PAO met 10/31 with Mahmoud Abdel Hadi,
Director of the Al Jazeera Media Training and Development
Center located in Doha, now in its second year of operation.
Abdel Hadi said the focus of the Center is regional and that
1,500 Arab journalists have participated in the Center's
programs this year, with training provided by British and
French journalism institutions. The Center has a developing
relationship with the University of Missouri's School of
Journalism. Abdel Hadi attended MEPI's October 2004 Media
Strategies workshop in Abu Dhabi and said the Center is open
to cooperation with MEPI. End summary.


2. (SBU) Abdel Hadi reports directly to Al Jazeera Managing
Director Wadah Khanfar. A journalist of Palestinian origin,
Abdel Hadi came to Doha in 1998 to work for Islam Online.
(Note: A popular Islamic affairs website with wide
international readership headquartered in Doha, its titular
head is Muslim cleric Yusuf Al Qaradawi. End note). He then
moved to Al Jazeera where he was instrumental in setting up
the Al Jazeera website. In 2003, he began setting up the AJ
Training Center, which he has directed since its inception in
early 2004.


3. (SBU) Abdel Hadi told PAO the AJ Training and Development
Center ("the Center") was formally established in February
2004 and is now approaching the end of its second year. With
20 permanent administrative staff, the Center occupies a
leased villa in Doha's Al Sadd neighborhood, pending
construction of a permanent site closer to the AJ studios in
the Markhiya area of Doha. The Center is well-equipped with
state of the art media technology. The Center's mission is
regional in scope and it conducts training and consultation
activities both in Doha and in other Arab countries. The
Center has no training staff of its own but imports trainers
on an as-needed basis from various British/French/US
journalism institutions. The Center currently has memoranda
of understanding with the UK's Thomson Foundation and
France's "Ecole Superieure de Journalisme de Lille," said
Abdel Hadi. He said the Center also has a relationship with
the University of Missouri's School of Journalism (MU

Professor Emeritus Roger Gafke is scheduled to teach a
train-the-trainers course at the Center in Doha on November
20) and has recently proposed a memorandum of understanding
with Missouri. The Center is also exploring possibility of
signing an MOU with Japan's NHK news service. In addition,
the Center conducts courses in cooperation with international
organizations, such as a recent course in documentary
production offered in cooperation with the International
Center for Journalism (ICFJ). The Center's language of
instruction is English, with interpretation provided as
needed for participants.


4. (SBU) According to its promotional brochure, the Center's
overall mission is "to contribute to the development of Arab
and international media." The Center provides training and
consultation in television, radio, print media, e-journalism,
media marketing, media planning and media management.
Training and consultation take place in Doha but the Center
also designs and implements programs in the field. It has
conducted extensive training and consultation for Sudan
Television, as well as programs in the UAE and Oman. Abdel
Hadi says he has visited both Yemen and Djibouti to design
programs for their state media operations, although both
projects have run into funding problems. The Center is
non-profit and structures its fee schedule with the aim of
breaking even, so it cannot provide free training, said Abdel
Hadi. Training participants are almost exclusively Arab
journalists, although the Center once ran a course for
journalists from Kyrgyzstan, sponsored and paid for by the
Qatar National Charity Association, he said.


5. (U) Abdel Hadi provided the following statistics for the
Center: 1,100 participants last year; 1,500 participants this
year (in Doha and in the field); 67 courses conducted last
year; 105 courses conducted this year; 5 courses conducted
outside Qatar last year; 12 courses outside Qatar this year.
The majority of the participants in the first year were Al
Jazeera staff, but now most are non-Al Jazeera journalists.

MEPI Cooperation?
--------------


6. (SBU) Under "Activities of the Center in its first year"
AJTDC's promotional brochure prominently mentions the fact
that the Center "participated in the workshop organised by
the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) on media
strategies in the Middle East and North Africa." Abdel Hadi
said he much appreciated the strategic approach taken by the
2004 MEPI workshop. He said strategic thinking on media
management and reform is much needed in the region, where
very often donor countries make disparate and uncoordinated
contributions to a problem that really needs a comprehensive
strategy."You end up with lots of workshops here and there,
but no results. To be successful with media reform, you have
to think strategically," he said. He said the Center is
currently cooperating with UNESCO to produce a model media
law, for example. Once the model law is completed, the Center
would begin to think about strategies for introducing it into
Arab countries around the region. There would be
opportunities for cooperation with programs such as MEPI
here, he said. Other opportunities for cooperation with MEPI
might include assisting the implementation of programs for
poorer countries in the region, such as the one designed by
the Center for Djibouti, which is currently stalled for lack
of resources, he added.

Problems of the Arab media
--------------


7. (SBU) Despite minor differences from country to country,
the state of the Arab media is pretty much the same
throughout the region, said Abdel Hadi. To a great extent,
the Arab media is still stuck in the old mindframe which
operated on the assumption that the national audience could
be controlled through the state media. This is no longer the
case, he said. The national audience has become
internationalized, but media managers in Arab countries are
failing to acknowledge and to deal with this change. They do
not understand the mission or the responsibility of the media
and continue to produce programming under the old paradigm,
which views state media as a propaganda apparatus for the
government and not a medium for monitoring government
performance. "The irony is, they are not meeting the goals of
their government by doing this," he said. Current media
managers do not undertake studies to analyze their
effectiveness in reaching their audience and never ask
"Should we offer a new proposal to the state?" he said. If,
for example, you find that you are spending 10 million
dollars to reach five percent of the national audience, and
those five percent are merely watching the main news
bulletin, "you have to recalculate. You should even consider
'to be or not to be' -- should we continue to exist?" But
this does not happen in the Arab world, he said. Media
managers simply want to keep their jobs and don't want to
make changes that could jeopardize their jobs and the status
quo.


8. (SBU) Abdel Hadi noted that there is a definite
generational gap among Arab journalists. In many cases, it's
too late for the older generation, he said. Changing mindsets
requires a sweeping removal of old ideas, and this is not
easy to accomplish. "It can be very discouraging to work with
older journalists, but what a joy to work with the younger
ones!" Abdel Hadi said. About 40 percent of the participants
who go through the Center are in their 30s or younger, and
these are the future of Arab journalism, he observed. Some of
them are discouraged when they return to their home countries
and are stopped from implementing what they have learned by
the older generation of managers, so the Center tries to run
a parallel track, reaching out to both journalists and to
their managers, to inculcate universally accepted standards
of journalism, said Abdel Hadi.

Pilgrimage visas for Al Jazeera staff
--------------


9. (SBU) Abdel Hadi noted in passing that it is next to
impossible for Al Jazeera staff to obtain Saudi visas to
perform Umra (the minor pilgrimage to Mecca) as private
citizens and that they also face significant difficulties in
getting regular Hajj pilgrimage visas from the Saudis.

Al Jazeera Radio - 107.7 FM
--------------


10. (U) Abdel Hadi mentioned that live sound track for Al
Jazeera TV is available via FM radio in Doha on 107.7 FM,
which has proved to be the case, although signal quality is
somewhat choppy.
UNTERMEYER