DUBAI'S ARAB MEDIA FORUM: HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LOW

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ABU DHABI 000549 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE STATE FOR NEA/ARP; NEA/PPD POSTS FOR PAO LONDON FOR SREEBNY E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL KDEM KMDR SCUL PGOV KPAO AE SUBJECT: DUBAI'S ARAB MEDIA FORUM: HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LOW EXPECTATIONS Sensitive but unclassified; please protect accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The Dubai Press Club organized the Arab Media Forum April 23 and 24, 2008, focusing on the theme "Bridging Arab Media Through Technology". Well-attended workshops covered the spectrum of technological change in regional media. UAE government officials declared the Forum a success in establishing Dubai as a global media hub, even though the event was smaller and lower in profile than the previous year. Lively panel discussions with audience Q&A revealed that the struggle between government and the media over issues of control and liberty goes on, and gave voice to a common perception that lack of autonomy, independence and full freedom of expression continue to be the real, and very low-tech, hurdles to regional media development. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (U) The Dubai Press Club organized the Arab Media Forum April 23 and 24, 2008, focusing on the theme "Bridging Arab Media Through Technology". This is a joint Public Diplomacy Abu Dhabi/Dubai Public Diplomacy Hub report. ¶3. (U) The tech-heavy schedule featured workshops on how Arab media are responding to new technologies, the interface between IT and media organizations and institutions, and the constraints and boundaries of new media technology. One session devoted to screening two short documentaries from Iraq (introduced by Iraqi government spokesperson Ali Dabbagh) and the Palestinian territories (introduced by Palestinian democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti) was a study in contrasts. Dabbagh presented a short film praising the diversity and freedom of media in the new Iraq. He was met with skepticism, and all comments from the floor focused on how bad things are in Iraq, despite Dabbagh's stated evidence to the contrary. The audience received enthusiastically Barghouti's short film focusing on the violence and difficulties that journalists working in the Palestinian territories face and his comments decrying Israeli and U.S. policy in the region. ¶4. (U) Another session, moderated by Al-Arabiya news anchor Muntaha al-Ramahi, debated the Arab Media Charter adopted February 12, 2008 by Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo. Panel member Salah Aeddine Maaoui, Director General of the Arab States Broadcasting ;Union (ASBU),defended the Arab Media Charter before an audience that was not buying it. One audience member denounced the ASBU as a "do-nothing" entity, to Maaoui's evident irritation. Panelist Mahmoud Shamam, a member of the Board of Directors of Al-Jazeera (which has been outspoken in denouncing the charter),deflated Maaoui's suggestion to make it a full-blown regulatory mechanism. Shamam said he would trust such a mechanism in Europe, where a credible judicial system exists, and his subsequent question on whether anyone in the audience believed such a system existed in the Arab world provoked open laughter. Shamam dismissed the charter as an anachronism, one that would be impossible to implement in a world where the media is increasingly diverse and uncontrollable. Fellow panelist Al-Arabiya News Director Nakhle El-Hage agreed, saying that the charter was a poor effort by Information Ministers to justify their jobs, and that in this new media environment, no one any longer understands what the job of Information Minister entails. Humorously, former Kuwaiti Information Minister Dr. Sa'ad Al-Ajami, present in the audience, rose to say that after nearly two years in the job, he himself had no idea what his job was and quit to return to teaching at the university. ¶5. (U) Algerian blogger Esam Hamoud (www.hamoudstudio.com) picked up the theme of "uncontrollable" media during his presentation on the spread of internet-based media. Hamoud suggested that fewer constraints and less self-censorship in cyberspace would, within two to three years, propel blogs significantly ahead of traditional newspapers in the timeliness, efficiency, accuracy and freedom of expression in sharing information. He noted the uncensored nature of the news on blogs, and particularly highlighted the use of raw, unfiltered video and audio as a source of greater trustworthiness. [Note: the issue of sourcing and fact checking was given considerably less attention, and it is worth noting that the three most prominent news events in the UAE in the past two weeks have been the launch of three quite traditional newspapers: The National, the International Herald Tribune, and an Abu Dhabi-based version of The Financial Times. End note.] There was a lengthy debate on the use of Facebook in Egypt, specifically how one woman's cause had a huge and concrete effect on public opinion, leading to calls for a ABU DHABI 00000549 002 OF 003 nation-wide strike. Najat Rushdie of the UNDP presented a detailed study showing that a majority of youth and women in the region use chat rooms, blogs, and social networking tools like Facebook to express their true opinions free from social control and coercion. Additional debate centered on whether and how governments could manage these phenomena, and whether they were truly authentic expressions of popular opinion or open to outside manipulation. ¶6. (U) The challenges of new media were raised in different guises. Established Arab journalists clearly worry that internet and broadband/digital media will overtake and overwhelm traditional print, television, and radio. Others, including the international participants (mostly from India and the UK),stressed that in this brave new world of journalism, the link between medium and message is broken, with the message now independent of the medium. Journalists therefore need to focus on the message, and realize that the medium could change or vary according to the audience and technological realities. Participants highlighted both possibilities and concerns. On the positive side, some felt that digital media made news and events truly international in scope and coverage, and empowered media to develop special relationships and niches rather than dealing only with mass consumption. Other participants, however, expressed concern that the "false intimacy" of cyberspace actually creates a distance between the media and the public, and also noted the potential problems of a new media that has enormous breadth, but very limited depth. ¶7. (U) Freedom of expression was a recurrent theme of the panel discussions and provoked the strongest audience reactions of any theme. Issam Dari, the Chief Editor of Syrian newspaper Tisreen, made the startling comment that "there are no journalists in Syrian prisons", which had the moderator quite nearly jumping out of her chair to challenge him and ask about imprisoned Syrian journalist Michel Kilo. Dari's reponse, that Kilo is not a journalist and therefore does not count, provoked shock and outrage from the audience. One member said it was a shame that some people (i.e., Dari) passed themselves off as journalists when they were clearly paid government spokespeople. In another session, Ahmad Al Sheikh, a prominent media advisor to UAE Vice President and Dubai Ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, provoked puzzlement and laughter arguing that all media in Dubai is commercially run and not government-owned, and that there is no disturbing news aired or published in Dubai or the UAE because only good things happen here. ¶8. (U) Some organizations used the Forum as an opportunity to unveil future development plans. Most prominently, Al Jazeera Arabic announced that it will be opening its first bureau in Saudi Arabia in the next few months, as a result of recent Saudi-Qatari reconciliation. The first "journalism" school in Riyadh is also planned to open soon, in response to the perceived need to train Saudi journalists to cope with new technologies and new media. There are also plans to open a new journalism and broadcast center in Manama. ¶9. (SBU) Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid presided at the official opening, during which his son, Dubai Deputy Ruler Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid, gave the inaugural address. Sheikh Maktoum underlined the Arab Media Forum's importance as a regional and international dialogue platform, noting that "Dubai has excelled in all sectors, establishing itself as a leading global media hub." Nonetheless, we heard complaints from several journalists that the event was much smaller and lower in profile than the previous year. An event that in 2007 had consumed the expansive Madinat Jumeirah complex was reduced by half and squeezed into the meeting room section of the Monarch Hotel. Dubai Press Club Chairwoman Mona Ghanem al-Murri (also the wife of Minister for Cabinet Affairs Mohammed Gergawi) told us that the event was scaled back to improve quality. Apart from the panel members, however, there were fewer media executives and working journalists than in past years, and their lack of enthusiasm was evident. ¶10. (SBU) Some of the institutional ties of the organizers and sponsors provoked our interest. The Dubai Press Club is a creation of the Government of Dubai, established specifically to foster regional dialogue on Arab Media. The Arab Media Forum is, itself, a chartered corporation, part of Arab Media Services Group. That company is affiliated with (and does PR work for) Dubai Pearl, one ABU DHABI 00000549 003 OF 003 of the major sponsors of the Forum and developer of an extensive tract of real estate at the base of the Palm Jumeirah artificial island project, in the heart of Internet City, Media City and Knowledge Village. Dubai Pearl, along with those other properties, is part of the holding company TECOM, which in turn is part of the Dubai Holdings group, headed by Gergawi. ¶11. (SBU) The opening panel on transformations breaking the traditional mold of Arabic media may well have revealed the real and continuing impediment to media in the region, and set an ironic tone for a conference designed to showcase high-tech, forward-leaning, development. Moderator Mohamed Fahad al-Harthi, the Editor of Al-Jamila and Sayidaty magazines, asked Showtime Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Danny Bottoms to comment on his experience as the chief of a multimedia conglomerate. Bottoms said that since Showtime was a purveyor of very traditional content (films),via some of the oldest transmission technology known (satellite dishes),and in one direction without interactivity with the client, he did not believe it would be accurate to use the term "multimedia". During the same session, Al-Hayat journalist Jihad Al-Khazen, one of the region's most respected writers and intellectuals in the field of communication, was asked whether modern technological developments would be the solution to remaining developmental obstacles. Al-Khazen, implying that technology was neither the problem nor the solution, identified the two principal obstacles: a "lack of financing", i.e. independent sources of financing not tied to prominent interests or governments; and the reality that "the Arab media has no impact because it lacks credibility based on real freedom." QUINN