DUBAI'S ARAB MEDIA FORUM: HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LOW

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SUBJECT: DUBAI'S ARAB MEDIA FORUM: HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LOW
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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

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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

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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."

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