'This House believes that the Arab media need no lessons in journalism from the West'

• Introduction
• Khaled Hroub
• Abdallah Schleifer
• Marc Lynch
• Mona Eltahawy
• Audience
• Vote Result

TIM SEBASTIAN
Ladies and gentlemen, a very good evening to you and welcome to the latest in our series of Doha Debates sponsored by the Qatar Foundation. Conflict in the Middle East doesn't just involve guns and bombs. It's also played out in the media, specifically in the Arab and Western satellite TV channels. The Bush administration has recently raised the stakes, calling Al Jazeera and others 'hateful propaganda and the mouthpiece of Al-Qaeda,' but with the US press dominated by commercial interests and the Pentagon accused of planting false stories in Iraq, who can claim the moral high ground? Our motion tonight, 'This House believes that the Arab media need no lessons in journalism from the West' is certain to open up the controversial ways both sides operate. Speaking in favour, not surprisingly perhaps, is Khaled Hroub. He's the host of a weekly programme on Al Jazeera. He's also the Director of the Cambridge-Arab Media Project. His forthcoming book is called appropriately New Media and Politics in the Arab World. With him, Marc Lynch, who is Associate Professor of Political Science at Williams College in America. He's an expert on the Arab media and has recently published a work entitled, Voices of the New Arab Public. Now, opposing the motion, Abdallah Schleifer, formerly an American journalist who covered the Middle East for NBC, he was their Cairo bureau chief for nine years. He then went on to found a Centre for Training Television Journalists in the Arab world. He's now crossed the fence to the Saudi-owned station Al Arabiya, and is their bureau chief in Washington D.C. You could say he's tasted it from all sides. And with him is Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-born journalist. She writes for the Arab daily Asharq Alawsat from the US, and is a frequent contributor for Western papers, among them The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Herald Tribune on a range of Arab issues.

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TIM SEBASTIAN
And now let me call on Khaled Hroub straightaway to speak for the motion.
KHALED HROUB
Thanks, Tim. Friends, my position is for the motion. I think that Western media is in no position to claim a moral high ground and to give others lessons or lectures. I think Western media should fix itself first. Of course there are so many honest media anchors in the West, honest practices as well, but the mainstream media is still in very bad shape. It's in a very bad shape because it allies itself with the ugly Western politics that everybody across the globe hates nowadays, and because of this alliance this media supported Bush and Blair's war against Iraq. This war was built on big lies - the lie that Osama bin Laden had connections with Saddam Hussein and a second big lie that Iraq had nuclear weapons threatening the West. Everybody now knows these were very big lies. Western media supported these lies and bought them. What kind of lessons can we learn from such a media? The second thing is that this media is mostly owned by private companies and when you have private companies, they seek profit, and when you seek profit, you focus on sensational material, on sex, fashion, celebrities. Maybe you and me, we know more about David Beckham and his wife Victoria, than about the millions of poor people in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia, who suffer on a daily basis. What kind of lessons do we learn from such a media focusing on celebrities and ignoring millions of people? The third thing is that this media - acknowledged by Western honest academics- is institutionally racist against the blacks, the Arabs, the Muslims and basically non-Westerners, and according to so many studies, you can find this kind of racism everywhere. What kind of lessons do we learn from racism-embedded media? My friends, I am vehemently with this motion and I think yes, the Arab media maybe has so many shortcomings and misgivings, but still Western media cannot lecture them and they do not have the moral high ground to give lessons to our media. Thank you.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Khaled Hroub, thank you very much indeed. If you think the mainstream media in the West is in such poor shape, why is your new station Al Jazeera International, hiring from the BBC, CNN, Sky? It would seem their policy is slightly at odds with yours.
KHALED HROUB
No, no, no, I said, I acknowledge, I mean, I have so many friends, so many good friends in Western media. I said nobody can negate the existence of individuals, practices, problems.
TIM SEBASTIAN
No, but we just heard a diatribe about all its faults, it's racially biased, it's prejudiced in all ways.
KHALED HROUB
If I hire you, Tim, I would be privileged. I mean, you are a good person and you work for the BBC.
TIM SEBASTIAN
But you can't have it both ways, you can't attack them on one hand and then hire them exclusively the next. I mean, you're trying to have your cake and eat it.
KHALED HROUB
No, no, no. Everywhere you can have this system. You can have a corrupt system, corrupt destruction, but you have certain elements in it, good ones, you have good individuals, yes, you have good practices, the code of practices is fine, but the outcome, the performance, the output is really bad.
TIM SEBASTIAN
The output is so bad that Al Jazeera last year bought access to a thousand hours of BBC programming. It's so bad, it's so prejudiced, it's so biased, it's such rubbish that you bought a thousand hours. Is that a good argument?
KHALED HROUB
The documentary side, I mean, you have good stuff, yes, I said this in my first assessment. I am acknowledging this and I am purely objective, but I said on the whole, by and large, yes, the outcome is bad. How can you accept this media telling lies to the public in the West, and misinforming them, the public?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Where is the racism? Give me an example of the racism you talked about, just give me an example.
KHALED HROUB
I'll give you an example. Last week Sir Ian Blair, the chief policeman in Britain, he said, and I quote him, he said, 'The British media is racist against blacks.'
TIM SEBASTIAN
He then apologised.
KHALED HROUB
But he was very strong on the meaning of it. The content was still there. He said, 'If you have a white man killed in Britain, everything will go upside-down.'
TIM SEBASTIAN
That's what he said. I was asking you for an example. Give me an example. You're quoting him, but what's the example?
KHALED HROUB
Two weeks ago, this guy from Cambridge, Cambridge-educated man, he was killed. People went nuts in Britain. A year before that, a black man died, and I forgot his name, of course, but he had only a very little paragraph. I can't remember his name.
TIM SEBASTIAN
So you're short of details, Khaled Hroub, you're short of details.
KHALED HROUB
I am not short of details.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You paint with a broad brush.
KHALED HROUB
I am not short of details. I am telling you, the chief policeman in Britain said that racism in our media is very strong and imbalanced, and this is proven by so many studies in Britain itself. So many universities prove that racism is there against the blacks, against Arabs, against Muslims, Islamophobia, everything is in this area.
TIM SEBASTIAN
I think you'd have a lot of arguments on that score. Khaled Hroub, thank you very much indeed.

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TIM SEBASTIAN
Abdallah Schleifer, let me ask you to speak against the motion first.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Well, actually Khaled and Al Jazeera are at the core of my argument. One of the reasons why NBC, which was the first satellite television news, and then the BBC and then Al Jazeera, are so sensational, so extraordinary in their impact, was precisely because for the first time in 20 years there were Arab television journalists doing journalism, which simply didn't exist before. And where did they acquire those skills? They certainly didn't acquire them from Egypt TV or Sudan TV or Syrian TV. They acquired them from the BBC, from ITN, to quote our topic, they took lessons from BBC, ITN, and they're extraordinary, they're great, and whatever quarrels I might have with Al Jazeera, I certainly don't quarrel with their field reporting. You know, they go out there and do stories, and there was no such thing as field reporting on Arab television, and to a certain degree there still isn't except from Arab satellite television. So lessons were taken and lessons still should be taken, especially when you move into print media, which is scandalous except for a handful of opposition papers that are fairly recent in Cairo. Scandalous. Look, Saddam Hussein, when he gassed the Kurds, terrible. That story was broken by The Guardian and Newsweek, and at that time, not a single Arab newspaper reported it, because Saddam Hussein was the white knight of the Arab world, fighting the Iranians. Let me give you an outrageous example. Israel is frequently described as a Western outpost in the Middle East, so they come under our topic, I mean, fair enough, it is a Western outpost in the Middle East. You know the massacre at Shatila and Sabra, the famous massacre? You know who broke the story of that massacre? Two Israeli journalists, they're the ones who broke the story, because this idea that reporting is one thing and editorial perspective is another, and they reported and broke the story, and the even more interesting thing is that the man who bore indirect responsibility for that massacre, if not more than indirect responibility for that massacre - Ariel Sharon - was censored by an Israeli court and it was reported in the press. I don't know of a single equivalent thing in Lebanon, where to this day there has never been procedure or reporting on the massacre by Lebanese Phalangists and other forces. So I could go on with examples, but above all, let's take this idea that the Western press uncritically supported the war in Iraq. The New York Times and The Washington Post, which are considered the two most prestigious papers in America, are consistently engaging in critical reporting. So many of the scandals that have happened in Iraq had been exposed by those papers, and by the way, The New York Times didn't support the war editorially. I don't recall with The Post but let's forget about the editorial perspective, we're talking about journalism, reporting, critical reporting is going on, that's my case.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Abdallah Schleifer, thank you very much indeed. Do you believe America can teach Arabs about journalism?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Yes, on principle, yes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
And yet you work for the media of a country rated 154th in terms of press freedom by Reporters Without Borders. That would seem to undermine your argument slightly..
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Well, not really because first of all ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
Saudi Arabia.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Yes, first of all, a Saudi Arabian of prominence and ties with the Royal Family is the private owner of Al Arabiya, and I think basically ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
It still soft-pedals stories about Saudi Arabia. When did it ever ask a hard question?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
I doubt it soft-pedals stories about Saudi Arabia any more than Al Jazeera has soft-pedalled stories about Qatar..
TIM SEBASTIAN
That's open to debate.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Yes, right, but what I'm saying is, all things given, Al Arabiya is still relative to the Arab world. You know, many of the people at Al Arabiya worked with Jazeera, then went over to Al Arabiya, and many of them came from the BBC as did the people of Jazeera.
TIM SEBASTIAN
But you trumpet the benefits of Western press as opposed to the Arab press.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Yes, on balance.
TIM SEBASTIAN
A press that signally failed to hold the Bush Administration to account over Iraq? I mean,
you mentioned The New York Times, but it took them a year-and-a-half to apologise for
playing dead, didn't it?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
I think their reporting from Iraq has been consistently critical. I'm not talking about partisan, I'm talking about being critical, which is what reporters should be, critical without being partisan. And the same with The Washington Post, to such a degree that they're constantly being denounced on the right-wing radio shows, etc. and I think that's also true with New Yorker, that's also true with Time and Newsweek.
TIM SEBASTIAN
They all pulled their punches. Dan Rather came out and said so, didn't he? And got eased out as a result of that from CBS and got eased out of his job as a result of that.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Oh, I thought he got eased out for going along with the forgery and evidence.
TIM SEBASTIAN
As you know, they soft-pedalled, didn't they?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
No, I don't think so. But I'll tell you something, it's very interesting you mentioned Dan Rather because when there are forgeries or falsehoods, these are incredible scandals which get written up in the American press. I have seen stories in the Arab press, interviews with me that never took place, you know, long interviews with quotes that never took place, and I have never seen scandals about people making up facts, making up names ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
The New York Times journalists had to resign for making up the facts.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Exactly, because of the scandal, and those scandals never happen in the Arab world although the problem is happening every day.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK. Abdallah Schleifer, thank you very much indeed..

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TIM SEBASTIAN
Let me now ask Marc Lynch to speak in favour of the motion please.
MARC LYNCH
Thanks, Tim. Khaled and Abdallah have done a very good job of framing the debate on the American side. As the sole American on the panel, I think I'll talk about the Arab media. I started studying the Arab media about 15 years ago, and simply looking at the difference between what we have today and what we had 15 years ago is simply breathtaking. Ten years ago I would say without a great deal of dissent, that the Arab televised media and their press media were more or less worthless. Five years ago, Al Jazeera was essentially still the only game in town. Today we have in satellite television alone, dozens of opportunities to see basically every opinion which you might want to see, every story which you might want to see covered, anything you want to find you can have. The competition, the diversity, the openness of today's Arab media I think is only a harbinger of where we're going. I think that when I look at the Arab media today, what I see is something genuinely revolutionary. Now, I'm not going to say that the Arab media is perfect. It's full of problems as I'm sure Mona is about to spell out in excruciating detail, but if you take all those problems and put them into the wider perspective, the genuinely revolutionary thing is that today's Arab media has essentially done what many people would have thought was impossible ten years ago. They have completely shattered the ability of Arab states to control information. They have shattered the ability of Arab states to control the narrative, they've shattered the ability of Arab states to control the red lines public discourse. Now, it's always edifying to see people screaming at each other on Faisal Al Qassem's show, but compared with the alternative of the deathly silence that used to characterise Arab public debate, I'm willing to make quite a few allowances for where we are. Now, I think the Arab media cannot create democracy by itself, but I think it's actually doing something which is really more important than creating democracy. It's creating pluralism, it's creating the possibility of meaningful public dissent in which it's OK to disagree, you're not a traitor to the Arab identity, you're not a traitor to the Arab cause if you disagree about what to do in Iraq. Arguing is in a real sense what being an Arab is all about now, and that I think is something which comes from Al Jazeera and all of its competitors, and that I think is the real contribution and what I would like to see as the historical legacy of Al Jazeera and its competitors.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch, thank you very much indeed. You say 'meaningful public dissent,' the kind of talk show which was characterised by a former Al Jazeera editor, Ibrahim Helal, as 'degenerating into unproductive shouting matches in which abuse replaced dialogue and analysis.' That's what you call revolutionary, that's something to shout about?
MARC LYNCH
Actually I like my friend Jon Alterman's discussion of it as Pro Wrestling.
TIM SEBASTIAN
They do the easy things, they criticise other people. You'll never get an Arab station criticising its own leadership on its doorstep, do you?
MARC LYNCH
That's true but if you look at the range that's out there, if you want to find someone criticising Qatar , just go to Abdallah's station, it's easy enough to do.
TIM SEBASTIAN
That's the point, you have to go somewhere else. It's easy to throw stones over the wall and then escape, isn't it?
MARC LYNCH
The difference is that in the past, nobody could criticise Saudi Arabia because there was no place to do so. Now there is, and if anyone wants to criticise Qatar , there's a place to do it.
TIM SEBASTIAN
But it's neither in Qatar nor in Saudi Arabia.
MARC LYNCH
Does it matter? These are pan-Arab debates for pan-Arab audiences. Does it really matter where the studio is located?
TIM SEBASTIAN
But isn't the point of journalism to act as watchdogs on your own turf?
MARC LYNCH
I think that's the next step. The next step has to be local media, local media which takes on the hard problems and holds local leaders accountable. Al Jazeera cannot do that, Al Arabiya cannot do that. National regional media can't stand in for political parties, they can't stand in for a local press, but if you don't have those things ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
So they've got a long way to go.
MARC LYNCH
They have a long way to go.
TIM SEBASTIAN
And in the meantime they could learn from the West, admiring the number of Western journalists that they do, Abdallah Schleifer being one of them?
MARC LYNCH
When I watch talk shows on American media and here I'll exempt our exemplary BBC
colleagues, I think that the Arab talk shows are considerably better, there's a wider diversity of views, the passion combined with the reasoned arguments that you find on a show like Open Dialogue or From Washington or shows on Al Arabiya, the quality of these programmes I think are considerably superior to what you see on most American political talk shows, which too often degenerate into the kinds of discussions which would make your description look kind.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, Marc Lynch, thank you very much indeed.

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TIM SEBASTIAN
Mona Eltahawy, will you speak against the motion?
MONA ELTAHAWY
Yes. Thank you, good evening, and thank you for coming out tonight, and I will speak against the motion simply by offering myself as an example to you. I was in Cairo last year for five months to cover my country's reform movement and the opposition movement and the various elections we had. Just before I left Egypt, I published a very critical opinion piece in The International Herald Tribune where I took my government to task for the violence they unleashed on Egyptians during the elections. And on the day the piece came out, I was summoned to State Security, where I was interrogated as to my whereabouts and my travel in what to me was a clear warning that the government was watching me. This isn't the first time that I was summoned to State Security. When I was a journalist in Egypt for ten years, I was summoned at least four or five times. This is not a free media, but nevertheless I consider myself lucky. Why do I consider myself lucky? Because last year in Egypt, several female and male journalists were sexually assaulted as they tried to do their jobs covering demonstrations in Egypt again. And just a few days after I left, the Prosecutor General in Egypt dropped the case against the men who'd assaulted these female and male journalists on the grounds that there was no evidence, when Human Rights groups and reporters' rights groups had plenty of film evidence and names and numbers of the people who assaulted these journalists. So basically the Arab media has to function in an atmosphere of intimidation, government control continues. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are exceptions to the rule. By and large most satellite channels are affiliated with various countries. Egypt has its own satellite channel that continues to hold Egyptians matters particularly when it concerns the President as primary. For example, when the entire world's media was covering the Iraq elections live, Egyptian satellite television put in the story buried the lead essentially, put it in the middle of the report. I turn on Libyan satellite television and they have news reports that reminded me of Soviet-style propaganda in which they criticise the West for its 'democracy' and show American police officers beating demonstrators and then saying, 'But in Libya, we have the great democracy of the People's Committees,' but they forget to tell you that Libyan journalists are summarily interrogated and imprisoned, and Libya has a terrible human rights record. In Syria the same thing exists, Syrian newspapers function as mouthpieces to their government. I could go on and on, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the entire Arab world, the media is still controlled by the state, journalists are intimidated. Khaled spoke of sensationalism in the Western media, the Arab media is full of conspiracy theories and outrageous rumours. There's no fact checking, no-one bothers to call people up and say, 'Did this really happen?' There's no retraction. As Abdallah said, you never hear a scandal in which a journalist has to be fired or suspended for creating, making up stories, and as a journalist in Egypt, I actually saw people from the Information Ministry go up to journalists from Egyptian media and give them questions to ask. So I ask you, is this a free media and is this a media that doesn't need lessons? I urge you to vote against the motion that the Arab media does indeed need lessons from the West.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Thank you very much indeed. Mona Eltahawy, you painted a very bleak picture of the conditions under which Arab journalists have to work. That's not their fault, they're doing a very good job and aren't they under difficult circumstances?
MONA ELTAHAWY
It's true, it's largely a state problem.
TIM SEBASTIAN
So they don't need lessons then, they're doing their best.
MONA ELTAHAWY
They do need lessons in that a lot of Arab journalists practise self-censorship, yes, because the state is there but also ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
But they don't want to be killed or put in jail, you can understand that?
MONA ELTAHAWY
That is true.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You're asking them to be heroes.
MONA ELTAHAWY
No, I'm asking them to be fair because when they're trained, you'll find that most journalism schools in the various Arab governments simply provide little or no training.
TIM SEBASTIAN
But you're asking them to risk their lives, which a lot of them have done.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Bravely so.
TIM SEBASTIAN
And paid with their lives.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Absolutely. I did mention the journalists in Egypt who were assaulted and continue to be imprisoned, absolutely, but at the same time, you are providing a service to readers that is simply either false news or self-censorship or peddling a government line that you simply know is a lie, so at the end of the day, are you risking your life for a lie or are you providing a service that truly will help governments or countries in transition move towards reform and democracy that we so sorely need.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You're doing your best under very difficult circumstances, but then would you paint the American media in the grip of big conglomerates as the kind of example that Arab journalists should follow?
MONA ELTAHAWY
The American media has a lot to answer for, I agree with you, and having lived in the States for five years, I've seen the things that they have to answer for, but at the end of the day, who exposed Abu Ghraib? It was the American media. Who continues to hound the Bush administration about surveillance, wire-tapping? We know all these things happen in the Arab world but nobody dares talk about them.
TIM SEBASTIAN
And which journalism profession, in the words of Al Gore, has 'morphed into the news business which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates'?
MONA ELTAHAWY
At the same time, I would use the argument you used about the circumstances in which the Arab journalists work.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You're not allowed to use my argument.
MONA ELTAHAWY
That's why I sit next to you, Tim.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Have your own.
MONA ELTAHAWY
In fact, the very American journalists are fighting those conglomerates and fighting that business control, and manage to get out there and create stories and expose stories that put both the businesses and the administration to shame, and we have a lot to answer for in the Arab world. And if I can take your point about the videos from al Qaeda, again speaking from a personal perspective, I arrived in Qatar yesterday, turned on the television to see the two main news items: a video from Ayman al-Zawahri and a video from the kidnappers of Jill Carroll, and I have to say, as an Arab and as a Muslim, I was sitting there waiting for someone to come up on Al Jazeera and speak against those and put them in context and provide the opposing view, and as an Arab and as a Muslim, I found none and I'm dismayed, and I have to ask, is this what we've reached?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Mona Eltahawy, thank you very much indeed.

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TIM SEBASTIAN
A lady right at the back, you got your hand up first. Your question, please.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
This question is for the panel speaking against this motion. What lesson would the journalists learn from the recent Danish publications of the cartoon pictures of the Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him? What can we gain from that?
TIM SEBASTIAN
This is about the cartoons which appeared in Danish and Norwegian magazines for which they have apologised, which were said to be anti-Islamic.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Yes, exactly. Number one, they've apologised. Number two, it isn't journalism. Those are cartoons and it's sensationalism. Number three, the protests against it have been widely reported in the Western and American media, including the Danish press, and number four, I have seen over the last five years - and I say this as a Muslim and embarrassed - some of the nastiest comments about Christianity and Judaism appearing in the Arab press, and nobody apologises for it, I mean, really scandalous stuff. I apologise as a Muslim.
TIM SEBASTIAN
What do you think it says? You asked the question.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
It's still part of journalism to sell a newspaper and an apology doesn't say anything, it's not there, it's in the internet, it's on newspapers, I mean, it doesn't really stop the issue, just an apology.
TIM SEBASTIAN
What more would you ask them to do?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
To stop the newspaper totally.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Ban it, on the strength of that? Mona Eltahawy, you wanted to say ...
MONA ELTAHAWY
Yes, I actually wrote about this issue and I wanted to give lessons to the Arab world in how to react to a story like this and what to do, but the newspaper I write for wouldn't run that column. I resent it, because I tried to answer that question that you ask. So my column ended up being run in The Daily Star and an Egyptian independent daily, which I hold as positive examples for the Arab world, and the lesson I would draw from that is that there really is freedom of expression in Denmark, because there's a difference between a cartoon and incitement to violence. In Denmark just a month or a few weeks before those cartoons were published, a Danish radio station actually incited violence against Muslims. It said, 'We must exterminate Muslims,' and the Danish government acted responsibly. It withdrew the licence for three months from that station. Those cartoons, have you seen those cartoons?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Some of those cartoons were self-critical, the Danes were making fun of themselves. Now, this is the lesson I would draw for the Arab world: we need to be self-critical. We need to sit down and say, 'If we're offended by something, how do we respond?' The Danish Prime Minister wouldn't intervene because as he said, 'We have freedom of expression in our country,' and they do. When we take to task our government for the anti-Semitism in the state-controlled newspapers, and we know they're state-controlled, the governments in the Arab world try to make the same argument as the Danish Prime Minister made, and it's a false argument. They control those newspapers and they use them as mouth-pieces, so I would say that we need to appreciate freedom of expression and create our own modes of expressions.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, let me bring Khaled Hroub in.
KHALED HROUB
Mona and Abdallah, well, I take your point I think. We have yes, loads of nonsense in our media, I said that in my statement, but why is it only about Arabs and Muslims? All these kind of statements from Danish or English or British or American newspapers and medias, every time attacking Arabs and Muslims, as if this is the easy target. Show me..
TIM SEBASTIAN
There are plenty of attacks on Tony Blair, plenty of attacks on George Bush.
KHALED HROUB
No, no, no. You asked me, Tim, about racism. About Tony Blair, this is local issue, but when you hate others, this is racism. Where is the freedom of expression in criticising Israel, or having the brutal politics in Israel against the Palestinians under the banner of freedom of expression? Why is everybody a coward when it comes to Israel and the freedom of expression and bravery comes up when you talk to Arabs and Muslims?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Do you want to answer that briefly, then I'll bring Marc Lynch in.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Yes. I've seen plenty of stories and opinion pieces that are critical of Israel and Israeli policies. To touch on your point about racism, Khaled, I have yet to see the kind of diversity policy that US media practises today in the US. I would have been with you if you'd said this maybe 30 years ago, that you go into an American newsroom and you don't see any racial diversity. Today you find Americans from all ethnic and racial groups. The same cannot be said about the Arab media. We know that the Arab media is dominated by a Sunni Muslim voice. Ask the Kurds, ask the Shias why, and Darfur, the genocide in Darfur is completely unreported.
KHALED HROUB
But..
TIM SEBASTIAN
Let her just finish.
MONA ELTAHAWY
No, no, this is about racism, Khaled, because you said racism. Ask Shia in Iraq how they feel when they are massacred while they pray and it's called resistance, and when Sunnis are killed in Jordan, it's called terrorism.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Would you like to address that point?
KHALED HROUB
My point was ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
No, no, no, would you like to address the point that she made?
KHALED HROUB
No, I agree with her. I said on that point, I said there is loads of nonsense in our media I disagree with, so I am not going to defend the massacre against Shia, I am against that myself.
TIM SEBASTIAN
What about the point about Darfur, the silence in the media over Darfur?
KHALED HROUB
That's what was on the press, on our media, on Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, everywhere and yes, maybe they didn't do a proper story, but it was on the Arab media as well. My question to Abdallah though, why didn't the BBC and American networks break the story of Saddam Hussein gassing the Kurds? This is the question. The Guardian is part of the honest media that I hinted at. Why didn't the official, the more influential BBC and American network cover that?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
That's a very good point. American government policy was pro-Saddam at that point. Nevertheless Newsweek which is not a radical newspaper or magazine by any means, it's centrist, establishment, and The Guardian broke the story despite the fact that their governments were with Saddam. They broke the story, then it was followed up in The New York Times, everybody, and nobody wrote about it in the Arab press at all. So that's a factor.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK. Marc Lynch, very briefly.
MARC LYNCH
Just three very quick points. As Hroub's already said, the point about Darfur is absolutely false. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have covered Darfur far more heavily than the American media have. There's far more discussion of it and far more reporting of it.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Do you agree with that?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
No, I don't. It's true, Jazeera and Arabiya have covered it. That's the beginning and the end of the story. All these massacres going on, you would see in the established Arab press, nothing at all.
MARC LYNCH
But Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are the two most widely watched stations in the Arab world so that's like saying, 'Well, you know, CBS and Fox News both covered it but the American media ignored it.'
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
No, but CBS and Fox viewers are in every home. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are widely watched, they're not in every home. Al Ahram has what, a million, two million readers? They've never mentioned it.
TIM SEBASTIAN
We're going to move on to another question. Lady over there, straight ahead.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Thank you. I have a question for Mr. Lynch. You mentioned that on any given day, you can turn on an Arab satellite news station and see an Arab government being criticised, but editorial opinions aren't the same thing as news reporting. Don't you think it's more important that rather than just airing people's personal opinions, these stations focus more on accurate and truthful news reporting?
MARC LYNCH
It's a great question and I think both are important, both news coverage and the editorial side, and I think one without the other doesn't work. On the news reporting side, I would look at the case of Egypt for example. You take the Kefayeh Movement and the protest against the extension of Mubarak's rule. Ten years ago, they would have been a couple of nuts on the street corner that no-one would have paid any attention to and the Egyptian government could have safely ignored. The fact that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya and all the other cameras were there turned them into a potent social force which made a real difference. Now, to me that seems like a good example of how news reporting made a big difference, and I would look around the region and generally I would say that in almost anything that happens today, you know, you've got to have the cameras there, and I think that everybody now recognises that. Regimes recognise it, social movements recognise it, political parties recognise it and they always have to take it into account.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK, let me bring Mona Eltahawy in here.
MONA ELTAHAWY
You know, I think it's very important to remember that this motion is not about Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. They're exceptions to the rule, because I spent those five months I told you about in Egypt, and as far as the state media was concerned, those Kefayeh events didn't happen, and if they happened, they were described first in the newspapers, they would say, 'There was a demonstration in down-town Cairo today that blocked traffic for four hours.' That was it, it was considered a traffic nuisance. It wasn't given any context, and during elections I would buy the state-controlled newspapers and just maybe one or two independent dailies, and it was like living in two different countries.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. There's a gentleman up there, you sir.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Thank you. First let me tell you that we Arabs, we are not idiots. We all know that the Arab media is a joke, you know, the Arab media is owned by either the state or either it's owned by persons who are wealthy and related to the state. Let me tell you something else.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Can we have a question though please.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Yes, my question, those Arab governments, they have so many ways to make this media rich, newspapers, they give them free advertisements, subscriptions and, you know, they don't grant licences for individuals to operate. How do you expect a democratic press and a democratic media to operate in an un-democratic society, in a society that would fight against human rights?
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK, who would you like to answer this question?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
I want whoever supports me to answer.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Supporting you? That's good.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Thank you.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Abdallah Schleifer, do you find yourself on the same side?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Yes, more or less, and I would say that this question about taking lessons from the West, number one, Marc's arguments all the time are Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, and as Mona says, that they're the exception that proves the rule, it's having an influence. There's no question, cosmetically Egyptian and other state national televisions are reacting and adjusting cosmetically, there is no local reporting, but that's another example. There's no question that all the talk, and I'm not just talking about the Bush administration, I'm talking about the continuous reporting by human rights groups, by Amnesty International, about the problems of the lack of democracy in the Arab world, the problems of that, is having an impact. Again, the Arab world is taking lessons from the West, and I'll tell you something, let me just say this, if you'll bear with me.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Briefly.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
That's going to be hard.
TIM SEBASTIAN
No, it's essential. It may be hard but it's essential.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
What is so terrible about the idea of taking lessons from the West? What is so terrible about that? Look, in the 12th century, if you were a young Frenchman or a young German and you wanted to learn about Aristotle and you wanted to learn about neo-Platonic thought, and you wanted to learn about the natural sciences, where did you go? You went East, to study in the universities, the Muslim universities of Andaluz.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK, Abdallah Schleifer, we really need to move on.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
So all I'm saying is, it's not a terrible thing to learn from wherever the sphere of knowledge is at that particular moment.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK, Khaled Hroub, come in there.
KHALED HROUB
Well, Abdallah, we have no problem in having lessons from everywhere. It's not the point. I agree with you, we in the Arab media, we have a very long way to go. We need so many things to fix, but my concern is, why from the West? And it's very patronising, as if you are telling us, 'You are like children, you have to have somebody from outside to come and teach you.' I tell you what, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, they were made by Arabs, by Arab individuals and professionals. The individuals were successful. The Western system, in creating our media like the Al Hurra channel, coming from Washington D.C. is a failure, so the system, the Western media system, controlled by Western government is a failure, whereas the practice in the Arab countries relatively was successful ....
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, we're going to have to move on to another question.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Can I respond to that quickly?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Very briefly.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Al Hurra is a government creation, right. I mean, I have friends there, so forgive me friends, but basically it's like a mercenary operation. My point about Al Jazeera and Arabiya is that the key core people learnt lessons from the West, in their years in England, in Europe, and there's nothing wrong with that at all.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, thank you very much. Go ahead, your question please.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Good evening. I'm a bit concerned because I see that everybody's trying to split the Arab media in an old and a new media, and I think they belong together as a view, and although I can also state that in the Western media are quite a lot of problems and not just to call up to Italy or in the former Eastern Soviet Union, we have many, many press and media happenings ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
Could we have a question?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
So the thing is, don't we see a big opportunity in the Arab media to establish the innocence which is maybe gone in the West? Journalism for journalism, just that it is good to work together and to put the forces together and find the right journalism again.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch, do you want to answer that?
MARC LYNCH
Yes. That's a really good point and I think one of the things about the Arab media is the real sense that politics matters, that politics is a productive enterprise. I think we've lost a lot in America, in the West, the idea that politics can actually be a noble profession and that arguing about politics can be one of the noble things that a person can do, so I think in that sense, I don't know if I would use the word 'innocence' necessarily, but certainly the passion for politics that we see on these stations, I think is an important contribution.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Gentleman up there, with the cap on, that's it.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
My question is directed to Miss Eltahawy. Don't you think it's unfair to compare privately-owned news agencies with government-owned news agencies in the East and the West?
MONA ELTAHAWY
Well, we're talking about the media in general, and the point I'm trying to persuade you of is that the Arab media does indeed need lessons. Even when it comes to the privately-owned media here, the so-called privately-owned media, the gentleman in front of you asked the question earlier, pointed out that Arabs indeed are not stupid and understand that even the privately-owned media are related to the state somehow or other. There is an opportunity for co-operation, whether between the state media here or privately-owned media there, and I would use the words of the former Chief Editor of Al Jazeera, to speak to Khaled too. Ibrahim Helal told The New York Times in 2001, 'Using the Western style, we have broken many taboos,' so there's an acknowledgment that you can take the best of that system and apply it here, but at the end of the day, the average Arab reader and viewer understand who controls that media.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch.
MARC LYNCH
I think it's the dynamic nature of the markets there that's really important. I think that the one thing that would resolve a lot of these problems would be if we had some kind Nielsen System so we could actually find out what people are watching on a regular scientific basis, then I think you'd find out that sure, as you say, there's all these state media that are doing terrible, terrible work, but I think you'd find that people aren't watching them, that people are running away from them in droves in order to find something they can trust, and that I think is the trend of the future.
TIM SEBASTIAN
The gentleman up there.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
I have a question for Abdallah, please. You mentioned that The New York Times was at last catching up with the mistake of missing the tough questions about Iraq before the war. Could you apply that with what's happening with Iran? Everybody knows that Israel has nuclear weapons. Nobody in the Western media is asking this question: are we 2, 3 years from now going to be saying, 'Oh, sorry, we missed this question.'
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Sorry, I didn't hear the question.About Israel having nuclear weapons?'
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Yes. We're debating if Iran has nuclear capability. Nobody in the West is talking about the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons. Are we missing the same type of question that we should have asked before the war in Iraq?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
I imagine most journalists, and these include journalists like myself, I mean, I wrote a book that couldn't get published in America between 1970 and 73 because it was considered so pro-Arab. Nevertheless, I sort of understand why the Israelis have nuclear weapons and why people looked away, because you have someone like the present President of Iran saying, 'We should obliterate Israel,' and so therefore it's a deterrent, so that's generally been understood, unless you're really ideological, whether you're pro-Israeli or anti-Israeli, it's a fact of life, it's a deterrent. They live in an environment, you can say it's their fault, but they live in an environment, you know, by the original establishment of the state, but they live in an environment that until recent years was pledged to their destruction.
TIM SEBASTIAN
But do you accept the premise that Western media have not been talking about Israel's nuclear weapons?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
No, because I think it's nothing to talk about. I mean, everyone knows it, it'll come up in discussion, but it's not, because you know, it's not something, you know, for 30, 40 years, whatever they did, they never said, 'We're going to wipe the Arab world off the map, we're going to wipe Jordan off the map, we're going to wipe Egypt off the map.'
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, let's move on. There's a gentleman at the back. You have a question, sir.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Hello, yes, this is a question for Mrs. Eltahawy. You were saying that Arab media should be encouraged by freedom of expression and freedom of speech. How could that be possibly done when there have been three Al Jazeera centres being bombed and now Bush is threatening to bomb the Al Jazeera right here in Doha?
TIM SEBASTIAN
This is a good subject, uppermost in people's minds.
MONA ELTAHAWY
OK. We don't know yet the facts behind the purported statement about the bombing of Al Jazeera. We don't know exactly if that was definitely said or not, so time will tell when the trial begins of the two men who leaked this report. But as for the deaths of Al Jazeera journalists, I agree with you it's heartbreaking. I've lost friends in Iraq. A cameraman I worked with at Reuters was killed in Iraq and various friends of mine wounded, but at the same time who has killed more journalists in Iraq? It's been the insurgents, not the American army, so it's been a very bloody war for the media in general, but what I'm saying is that freedom of expression is something that we saw in Iraq, in the Arab world, and it's something we have to strive for, and if you ask who created Osama bin Laden, my answer would be, it has been Al Jazeera, because if he did not have that platform, if Ayman al-Zawahri did not have that platform, where would they get their message out? We have nothing that puts it in context. They've made them icons for people who are looking for heroes, and my argument is, this is the wrong kind of freedom of expression and the wrong kind of hero worship.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Marc Lynch.
MARC LYNCH
On the Zawahri tapes and the like, if they don't broadcast, then they'll just go to the internet, that's what Zawahri's doing. They see the media like Al Jazeera as hostile to them so they go to the internet instead.
TIM SEBASTIAN
That's not a reason for broadcasting them, is it?
MARC LYNCH
When Zawahri goes on, I like the way Al Jazeera presents the tape, breaking it up into snippets, they have experts talk about it and question the premises, and argue about it. Because what does Zawahri want? What Zawahri wants is a monologue, he wants to lecture us, and Al Jazeera says, 'No, let's turn it into a dialogue. Let's have the leader of the Kefayeh Movement come in and see what he has to say about Zawahri'.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Dialogue? They've run the tapes endlessly. Where's the dialogue?
MONA ELTAHAWY
Yes. I didn't see dialogue yesterday.
KHALED HROUB
Well actually it was the news item of the tape, not the rhetoric or the jargon.
TIM SEBASTIAN
No, let's stay with these tapes, since your co-speaker brought it up.
KHALED HROUB
No, my answer to you, Mona, if Osama Bin Laden or Zawahri did not have the chance to post their message on Al Jazeera, they would have it on CNN.
MONA ELTAHAWY
For instance a video showing a lynching would never be shown on American television...
KHALED HROUB
We're competing against each other to have these tapes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Khaled, what would be so wrong if all the stations said, 'We're not going to broadcast this any more.'
MONA ELTAHAWY
Yes, cut off the lifeline, cut off its oxygen.
KHALED HROUB
Start with the CNN, start with the Fox News, start with the Western media who would die to have these tapes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Why not start with Al Jazeera to whom the tapes are delivered in the first place? You have the first delivery.
KHALED HROUB
Because they have the advantage of having this news item, you are attacking them.
MONA ELTAHAWY
You're using the sensational argument.
KHALED HROUB
Well, this is excusable with CNN as they had it for themselves in the first Iraqi war.
MONA ELTAHAWY
No, it's inexcusable for anyone and you said that the American media was full of sensationalism to bring in viewers. I make the argument that Al Jazeera is sensationalising these tapes to bring in viewers
KHALED HROUB
Don't you agree that Osama Bin Laden, I hate the man, by the way, Osama Bin Laden ...
MONA ELTAHAWY
So do I.
KHALED HROUB
... is a big, great news item all over the globe now?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Reported as a news item?
MONA ELTAHAWY
He has a platform. A platform is different from a news item.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Can I just take a show of hands and ask the audience who would like to see all stations stop broadcasting these texts from al Qaeda. Who thinks all the stations should stop? Probably about a quarter of the people here. Would anybody like to say why they think these stations should carry on broadcasting these tapes and giving al Qaeda exactly what it wants which is the publicity. Anybody like to stand up and comment on that, why they think these tapes should be broadcast? You, sir.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
It actually proves that America is not doing anything about this, Osama Bin Laden, so he's still around and it actually just keeps on proving and proving, each time they show a video, then, OK, he's still there.
TIM SEBASTIAN
So you think it's a good thing that the tapes just get delivered and the television stations meekly put them on each time without questioning them?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Why not? I mean, they probably would do the same if they got the tapes.
MONA ELTAHAWY
What purpose would that have, just to show he's alive, that's it?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Anybody else have a view specifically on that issue? There's someone up there.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
It's been very well acknowledged that when there were many terrorist acts with the Armenians several years ago, Canada took the decision that it absolutely refused to show or name any of the groups that were involved, and immediately the terrorism stopped in that country, so the concept that has been well presented would be that if you do not give a platform, you are not giving them the encouragement. Thank you. And could I ask a quick question? My question was touched upon by Mr. Lynch, the internet. It seems to me that the internet is the arena where the hard questions and the hard images are being first presented. Would you say that the journalist and the media are following or forced to follow, or would you say that they have taken an adequate and responsible position?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch briefly.
MARC LYNCH
I think that in a sense that the idea of just saying noone broadcasts, that time has gone, that ship has sailed. If Al Jazeera doesn't broadcast it, someone else will.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Is that the best argument you can bring forward for broadcasting, 'Somebody else will'?
MARC LYNCH
Well, you know, the diversity in competition cuts in both directions. It gives you pluralism but it also means that state control, whether it's a state trying to stop coverage of protesters or whether a state's trying to prevent Osama Bin Laden from being heard, it just isn't going to work any more. It's not even a moral argument.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Lady in the front row here.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
I'm sure you're very aware of the fact that many in the West have a negative impression of Al Jazeera because of the fact that Al Jazeera seems to have rocketed to fame, at least in the West, because of the broadcast of bin Laden and the Al Qaeda tapes. My question is, first of all, why has he chosen exclusively to deal with only Al Jazeera, secondly, how do you get those tapes, and thirdly, why do you keep broadcasting what is essentially the same message? After all, there's nothing new in his tapes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK. Khaled Hroub. How do you get the tapes?
KHALED HROUB
Well, they are sent over basically to Al Jazeera offices everywhere our correspondents are.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
DHL, I mean, how are they delivered?
KHALED HROUB
I am based in London myself, so I have no contact with it.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You've never asked?
KHALED HROUB
I have never asked myself.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You're not curious about how your own station gets these tapes?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
I have asked that question before and Al Jazeera replies and they wouldn't tell me before either.
KHALED HROUB
There are so many copies of them, so it's something technical, I don't know, I don't have the, know the techniques, but this is not the question. The question that I like that you have asked is why Al Jazeera keeps repeating them. First of all, they repeat them over one day, yes, and they edit them vigorously and they select the news item in them. I can assure you that very heavy editorial policy is now applied to all these tapes. They select the news item, what kind of message. Bin Laden is offering a truce, Bin Laden is saying, claiming responsibility over some, I don't know, criminal action or whatever. They broadcast only the news element in it.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Do they ever refuse to broadcast the tapes?
KHALED HROUB
Yes, they do and for your information, the tape that they refused to broadcast was broadcast by CNN.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Mona Eltahawy, you want to come in.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Khaled, I saw no context yesterday at all when I turned on the television and I saw Jill Caroll sobbing in front of a camera, forced to wear a headscarf, I saw no context in that. It was an awful message to send out and for me, as an Arab and a Muslim, it's a terrible thing to watch, and it just gives this platform, as we've all said, that is completely unnecessary. The damage was done many years ago, even if Al Jazeera has changed its editorial policy now, it has become so intertwined in many people's minds as being the platform for Bin Laden that whatever editorial policy it passes now is almost irrelevant, because you turn on the television, you see the Zawahri, you see Bin Laden, it becomes Bin Laden's station. It serves no purpose whatsoever. I think the woman was right, they say the same message again and again. Now what?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Very briefly, are there any journalists from Al Jazeera in the audience, somebody who'd like to comment on this? Khaled has said he doesn't ask too many questions about where these tapes come from.
KHALED HROUB
Well, I am up in the editorial newsroom.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Is there anybody from Al Jazeera who'd like to raise their hands and talk about this? Somebody at the back there. Are you from Al Jazeera? What is your position on these tapes?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Well, I just have a comment. Why is it a limitation of freedom of expression when the Danish and the Norwegian newspaper published the cartoons, and when Al Jazeera publishes these Bin Laden videos, it's sensationalism? Tto me it's like a double standard.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You think they're the same things Mona Eltahawy?
MONA ELTAHAWY
I completely disagree with you. You're talking about a newspaper that was published in a country of less then 6 million people. As my colleagues here for the motion mentioned, 50 million people watch Al Jazeera. What good does it do to show them the same message of hate, essentially hate, again and again, completely without context?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Well, there are about 12 million people in Sweden and the newspaper that was read by people in the entire Scandinavia - I'm a Swedish citizen - and the point is, what good does it do to publish a picture, a caricature picture, of the Prophet that's the symbol of Islam having a bomb on top of his head? Isn't that a connection between that religion and terrorism at a time when we need to be more responsible with what we publish?
MONA ELTAHAWY
You know, I agree with you in that comparing them, in that by showing those tapes of Bin Laden and Zawahri, and the kidnappers saying 'Allah Akbar' as they behead someone, it confirms that awful message of the prophet with a bomb on his turban because it links Islam with violence.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
I agree with you now, I agree with you now, I agree with you.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Oh, there you are then.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
I agree with you on that. My point was that there are lessons that need to be taught from both sides.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, let Marc Lynch have a comment here.
MARC LYNCH
I want to respond to Mona's point that you've made several times about watching Al Jazeera last night. I didn't watch TV yesterday, I was in transit, but every time that I've seen the Zawahri/Bin Laden tapes, I see endless discussion on Jazeera, and in a sense it becomes fodder for discussion and for debate and critique, and to me that seems like a healthy thing. If these ideas are bad ideas, as I believe that they are, talk about them, expose them and that is what the media can do. If you don't talk about them, it doesn't make them go away.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Let's take a question, gentleman from the fourth row, you sir.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
I would just like to ask, our audience isn't the same as the Western audience, therefore how can the West teach Arabs journalism when the West doesn't have the same knowledge of local culture?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Abdallah Schleifer, would you like to comment on that?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
The teaching is primarily a technical idea, that journalism means going out into the field and reporting, trying to be as close to the truth, 'closer to the truth,' in fact that is an Arabiya slogan, but I mean, trying to get as close to the truth as you can, and if there's a debate going on in that story out in the field, to show both sides of the debate, and that has nothing to do with local conditions. That's a fundamental idea of reporting what is happening out there, and that's been the great triumph of Al Jazeera and Arabiya and NBC which started all this field reporting, and that's what we taught at the Adham Centre in Cairo where we've taught many of the Arab journalists who've gone on to be great stars on Arab television, including Al Jazeera.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Khaled Hroub.
KHALED HROUB
Yes exactly. Now we are talking about the core of the motion. What kind of lessons,
Abdallah, if Western media taught Americans and the British the following, answering the question, 'Who occupied the occupied territories?' Plain, simple question. You have 43% of the Americans said it's the Palestinians, that the Palestinians occupied the occupied territories in the West Bank. Another question - 'What is the nationality of the settlers in the West Bank?' You have 38% of the British saying Palestinians. This is the outcome, this is the outcome of this misinforming media, and you want us to learn lessons from this?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Yet you want to tell me that 80% of your audience in a recent poll, an electronic poll, 80% of your audience thought it was quite legitimate to kill Western hostages.
KHALED HROUB
This is a different story.
TIM SEBASTIAN
It's the same thing.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Do you want to tell me that in any given city, there are a lot of fools walking around, I will agree with you.
KHALED HROUB
Half of the population in the West think Palestinians occupy Israeli land.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
My wife is Sudanese. She gets in a taxi in Jordan and the driver says, 'These people in Darfur, they're Jews, aren't they?'
TIM SEBASTIAN
Khaled, there's a significant of people in the West, they saw Elvis Presley last year. It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
KHALED HROUB
I think it means a lot. It means that every single people, every single individual in the West knows everything about Britney Spears or David Beckham. They don't know the sufferings that their government are doing against other peoples and countries beyond their borders. This is worrying.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Look, I saw more stories about the terrible things that the Israelis were doing during Oslo, you know, expanding the settlements, stealing the waters, stealing the land, I saw more stories about that in Ha'aretz English edition than I did in the Arab press in Egypt, because at that time Egypt had very good relations with Israel, so not a single Egyptian journalist went to the occupied territories to report on the occupation, whereas the Western press did go and did report on the occupation.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Mona Eltahawy, very briefly.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Khaled, your argument about lack of knowledge of Palestinian issues I could make equally regarding an Arab audience, because the only way Palestine is reported in the Arab world is purely political. Khaled, we do not cover Palestine in the Arab world as a human issue, we cover it as a political issue and while politics are important, we don't know the day-to-day lives of Palestinians. Beyond check-points there are lives, and as a small example, just think, before I moved to Jerusalem to be a correspondent for Reuters there, I had Egyptians ask me, 'There are Palestinians inside Israel who have Israeli nationality?' i.e. the Israeli Arabs, the Palestinians of 1948. They knew nothing, they didn't know there were Palestinians inside Israel. Where is the knowledge in the Arab world?
KHALED HROUB
So we're saying Western media is informing the public there and telling them that ...
MONA ELTAHAWY
No, I'm saying the Arab media does just as bad a job.
KHALED HROUB
... Zionist settlers are Palestinians in Palestine.
MONA ELTAHAWY
No, I'm telling you, the Arab media does not do a much better job, and why are we not informing the West? Where is our education of the West?
KHALED HROUB
I agree on the wrongdoings of our media, but what I'm telling you, the Western media is not the source to have lessons, this is my point.
MONA ELTAHAWY
Have the Arab world taught the West anything about Palestine or the Arab world? We've failed.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
At the price of repetition, I remind you, during Oslo, not a single Egyptian journalist went to cover what the settlers were doing, whereas The New York Times, other papers would at least occasionally do reports on the expansion of the settlers, what was happening with Hebron, whatever.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, let's more on to a new question, lady in the second row. And I can just remind you of tonight's motion, 'This House believes that the Arab media need no lessons in journalism from the West,' that is the topic of our discussion.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
I don't think that the Arab media needs lessons from the Western media, specially the American media, because American media doesn't show the whole truth, they show only what they think that's true, which is totally wrong...
TIM SEBASTIAN
Were they wrong about Abu Ghraib, were they wrong about Guantanomo Bay, were they wrong about the policies of rendition?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Well, listen, a lot of Americans support Israel and there are disagreements with Palestinian, and they think that Palestinian took the Israel land and all these kind of issues. I am saying that the American media doesn't show the whole truth, and Mr. Abdallah says that, you know, he supports the idea that the Arab media should take lessons from the Western media and US is from the Western media, so what lessons can we take from US media? Would you please supply these lessons?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Abdallah Schleifer, a quick list.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
A quick list, which is all the virtues of Al Jazeera, Arabiya, Abu Dhabi television, practised by the reporters, many of whom are in England and the United States, or studying at the Adham Centre, where they acquired a sense of what we call international standards of journalism which were not practised in the Arab world, which is going out, as I said before, and field reporting.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK. Do you buy that?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Sir, I didn't agree actually with what you said. I don't agree, just that.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
You know, I've been to conferences with Khaled at Cambridge where the issues we've debated could never be debated in much of the Arab world. Would you agree with that?
KHALED HROUB
It has nothing to do with media.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
No.
KHALED HROUB
I agree with you about the oppression in Arab countries, about the bad regimes.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
We're talking about the media, these conferences are about the media. No, I repeat, all the virtues of Arabiya, Jazeera, Abu Dhabi television, NBC, when they were working with the BBC, are standards of international journalism which are required in the West. Just as I said before, if you wanted to learn about Aristotle, Plato and the natural sciences, you learned them from the East in the 12th century..
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Mona Eltahawy, quickly.
MONA ELTAHAWY
I would also add investigative journalism and human interest stories, i.e. local news. We do not have the concept of local news in the Arab world. All our news is focused abroad, it's all about foreign policy and politics, and while they are very important, we need to look inward, we need to be introspective and self-critical. As a very short example, just before I left New York, a huge story in New York papers and local television news, there was a terrible story about a 7-year-old girl who died after her stepfather beat her, and this story created such sympathy in the community in New York that hundreds of people turned out for her memorial service, and the child services which failed her terribly, has suspended officers at work. We don't have local news in the Arab world because we don't have a concept of accountability, we do not look inward.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Marc Lynch.
MARC LYNCH
I just wanted to ask Abdallah a question quickly. It seems like you kind of reverse yourself now. Now it seems like you do think that Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV and all the others are doing quite a good job.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Oh no, I said that from the beginning. In fact I said that's the core of my argument, because these are precisely the channels one way or the other, everybody either worked with BBC or American media and acquired their lessons.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
And I'm talking about reporting, I'm not talking about talk shows.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right, let's move on. There was a lady who had her hand up for a long time.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
I'd like to restore a sense of balance. Nobody argues that the best of Al Jazeera weren't trained in the West, came from the BBC, a wonderful institution. What they did is take that training and take it to the next level. Yes, Al Jazeera broadcasts al Qaeda statements. They also broadcast Bush's major speeches, Blair's major speeches, live and in full.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Does that show editorial judgment?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
That shows editorial balance. What is Jazeera's tag line? 'An opinion and the other opinion' Al Jazeera lives up to that. Let me tell you something, Tim. Today there was a report by Barbara Plett, a fine journalist, about Afghanistan. She mentioned that lots more women are studying in Afghanistan. This is true. Something she said, and I quote, 'that they could not do under the Islamists,' Islamists, not Taliban. That is racist.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Would you agree with that?
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
No, I see nothing racist. I mean, the word 'Islamist' I learnt when I was studying Islamic Political Science at AUV from the Muslim Brotherhood. They were writing in Europe in the 70's, quite actively saying, 'We're Islamists because we believe that Islam is not just a religion, not just the five pillars, it is a political perspective, it is a perspective thing,' so Islamist is not some invention of the right-wing press. Now, I happen not to believe that. If I did, I'd be a Buddhist, not a Muslim. I mean, I believe that Islam is the five pillars, that Islam is prayer and is fasting, it is Hajj, but that word 'Islamist' is something that's self-description, and if the Taliban regime isn't an Islamist regime ...
AUDIENCE Q (F)
It's sloppy journalism ...
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
I don't think so.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
... to use the word Islamist.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
I disagree.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
It's more accurate to say ...
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
You can say radical Islamist to differentiate between radical Islamists and modern
Islamists, but I think 'Islamist' is a legitimate word.
TIM SEBASTIAN
But your point is that you've got to be very, very careful about the terminology you use.
Gentleman at the back, you have a question.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Thank you. I would like to know, is there any part of the Western society that watches Al Jazeera channel and why?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch, you've studied this in great detail.
MARC LYNCH
Well, of course there's Arab Americans who do watch it, but in general the language barrier prevents most non Arabic-speaking Americans from watching Al Jazeera, so most of what they get is secondhand. What's interesting is that the one group of Americans that does pay close to attention to Al Jazeera is the government and that's I think important, that now, especially over the last few months, we're seeing more and more American officials going on to Al Jazeera and actually starting to engage in arguments, which I think is a very good thing, maybe they're starting to get a sense of what the Arabs are actually arguing about, so I think it's all to the good.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Can I ask what lies behind your question?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Yes, why do they watch it? That's what I want to know.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Well, in the case of the US administration, you said because they don't like it.
MARC LYNCH
Well, no, they watch whether they like it or not. Now they watch it because they see an opportunity to reach out to their public opinion so they think like being on it, they can actually reach the audience. I think it would be the reason there.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK, gentleman at the back.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
There was an uproar over the Danish cartoons.
TIM SEBASTIAN
We've kind of done that subject. Can we move on to another subject?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
It's not about the cartoons themselves, yet it's still acceptable for Al Jazeera to air Bin Laden's tapes, and it could be argued that both are just messages of hate, and I'm wondering that if that's the case, why does there seem to be a double standard between what's perceived from the Western media and Al Jazeera?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Who would like to take that? Abdallah Schleifer.
ABDALLAH SCHLEIFER
Well, unfortunately, and this is something that's bothered me for years and it's become much more apparent in the last couple of years, everybody has a double standard. I mean, we're always talking about the American, 'we' meaning the Arab world, because I've lived here for 40 years, or the Muslim world, we're always talking about the American double standard, which is true, it exists, there's an American double standard in the Arab/Israeli conflict. Because America is so committed to the idea of the State of Israel, it tends to have a double standard. Equally well there seems to be a double standard in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, which is somehow we never look at ourselves and see that we are doing the very things we condemn in the West, and I alluded to that earlier, not just showing Bin Laden tapes or showing beheadings. I'm talking about outrageous articles appearing in the print media throughout the Arab world, about Christians and Jews, you know, so I merely think we all need self-criticism and we've got to practise it and stop denying and looking for moral equivalents. Let's bite the bullet. That's one of the truths you learn from good journalism, self-criticism.
TIM SEBASTIAN
The gentleman at the back has waited a long time.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Thank you. My question is to the panellists opposing to the motion. Shouldn't the Arab media devise its own form of journalism rather than being negatively influenced by Western ideology, and furthermore, don't you believe that Western journalism is at times influenced by their governments and by their foreign policies? Thank you.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Mona Eltahawy, it's a good point, isn't it?
MONA ELTAHAWY
You know, I would have to echo what Abdallah said earlier about everything from the West is negative. Why do we always assume everything from the West is negative? This isn't a negative versus positive thing. This is taking the virtues of that kind of journalism and applying it here, and as the gentleman before you mentioned the double standards, we have many problems within our own societies in the Arab world that I would say negate those differences. You talk as if viewers here are any different from viewers anywhere else. People are human, at the end of the day. We need to see truthful stories.
TIM SEBASTIAN
His point was that the Western media are negatively influenced by the governments in the West, that was his point. Can you answer that?
MONA ELTAHAWY
The only time I have seen Western media negatively influenced by their governments were in the days after 9/11 and in the days leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, and US media in particular has acknowledged that. These were exceptional circumstances. Those exceptional circumstances are the norm in the Arab media. The Arab media is usually most of the time influenced by their governments.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Yeah, but the penalties are slightly different, aren't they? You just get left off the White House Christmas card list if you offend them, but if you get a call from a prosecutor in Egypt, the consequences are slightly different, aren't they?
MONA ELTAHAWY
The consequences are different but we're also talking about different stakes, and we're talking about countries, people have a need to hear the truth, this is not a Western thing. Everybody wants to hear the truth, and when you talk about double standards and holding that up to the light, we have failed our people miserably in the Arab world. I come from a country where Christians comprise perhaps 10, maybe 15%, we don't even know how many Christians there are in Egypt because the government won't let those statistics out, and the local media have done a terrible job of covering sectarian violence, so before we talk about the negatives in the Western media, let's focus on ours and see how Western-leaning our audience is.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Let's hear from the questioner. Do you accept what she has to say?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Partially, yes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
So you're convinced?
AUDIENCE Q (M)
Yes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
You have a convert. Gentleman at the back over there. You, sir.
AUDIENCE Q (M)
This is for the side for the motion. Wouldn't you agree as in line with the argument of Mona that the Arab media and the Arab governments have to take an inward look? Instead of trying to divert attention from our own internal social problems, we need to cast the glare of journalism on to our own problems.
KHALED HROUB
Well, I agree, as simple as that, but has nothing to do with our motion. Yes, I agree with, I said once, twice and three times that yes, in our media there are so many wrong-doers, we have to fix them, but my point is that in the Western media there are even more and we can't learn much. I'll tell you something, Tim, over the past 3, 4 days, I have been interviewed more than 15 timeson Hamas winning the elections, because I authored a book on Hamas, and almost in all of them, this is the standard of question: how do you perceive the winning of Hamas who calls for the destruction of Israel in their charter? Some of them said, 'And eliminating the Jews, what do you think of that?' Then I said, 'Well, have you read their charter?' This is about the fact checking. 'No, I didn't but everybody says the same.' So this is the fact-checking in the West that you want us to learn from? None of them even read the charter, to ask me that question.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch, very quickly.
MARC LYNCH
I agree with a large part of the premise of the question and with Mona's point, that the domestic media has to get a lot better at dealing with those kinds of local issues of corruption and just all the enormous internal problems, and I think that has to be the next step, but I would say that in terms of whether there's self-criticism and these kinds of discussions of these issues, I think three years ago versus now is a phenomenal difference. I mean, your own editorial page (Asharq Alawasat) routinely publishes numerous articles which are critical of al Qaeda, which are critical of Islam, which raise exactly these kinds of questions. They didn't do it five years ago, now they do, and so again, this is the trend that I see.
TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. Lady in the fourth row. You, yes. Could you stand up, please.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes, my question is, why do the people around the world, worldwide, take pity on Ariel Sharon's poor health conditions after all the bad things he's done?
TIM SEBASTIAN
You don't think his poor health was a legitimate subject of news interest?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes, but my point is, I want to know why people take pity on this man? I'm not saying, you know, 'He's a bad Jew,' there's no such thing as a bad Muslim, Christian or a Jew.
TIM SEBASTIAN
It's not really a question about the press, you are asking about people's reactions around the world.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes.
TIM SEBASTIAN
We basically can only answer for the press here.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes. So, but my point is, I want to ...
TIM SEBASTIAN
Mona Eltahawy, you want to have a go at this, do you?
MONA ELTAHAWY
You know, Ariel Sharon is the Prime Minister of a country that is in the middle of the Arab world, that has had several conflicts with the Arab world, and his health must be covered, but I would put the question around to you and tell you that when the President of my country was taken to Germany, he was taken ill and taken to Germany, we didn't know a thing about his health. We didn't know if he was going to live, if he was going to die, what was wrong with him, we don't even have a vice-president in Egypt. Our media didn't cover a thing, so you know, we know more about the health of Ariel Sharon than we know about the health of every single Arab president, because you can report it, so the Arab world itself can report about Ariel Sharon, we can't report about our own leaders. He's the Prime Minister of an important state, his health must be covered. Whether people are feeling sorry for him or not is really besides the point.
TIM SEBASTIAN
OK. Lady at the back, two rows behind you.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
My question is for Miss Eltahawy. You mentioned that the Shia point of view is not shown on Arab media, yet TV channels like Al Manar are based on Shia points of view and they're banned from the US, so why should we take lessons from the country that is doing mistakes you are trying to avoid?
MONA ELTAHAWY
Well, the United States considers Hizbollah a terrorist organisation, that's US policy, so the US will not let that into its airways. It's not because it's Shia. It's because of things that Hizbollah has done in the past. Now, again if I can take it back to my country, or take it to any other Arab country with a Shia minority, you never hear about the Shia in Egypt. Does anyone here know that there are Shia in Egypt? There are Shia in Egypt. What about the Shia in Saudi Arabia? What about the Christians in Egypt? So you're not talking about US policies because it's a Shia station. You're talking about US responses because it's Hizbollah and they considerate it a terrorist organisation.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Don't you think that the people should know and see what the US considers as terrorists? I mean, what about the Shia in the US? Don't they need to know what it's like for the Lebanese in Lebanon, for the Lebanese Shia I mean?
MONA ELTAHAWY
Well, Al Manar isn't the only station I'm sure that shows the Shia point of view, but I don't even know if Al Manar considers itself just, you know, the Shia station. Again, it's so associated with Hizbollah that it's moved beyond its religious affiliations, you know what I mean? It's not banning it because it's a Shia station. Pick up the average Arab newspaper and look for Shia opinion. Ask a Christian in Egypt how much access he or she has to the state media to get their points of view across. This is specifically religiously related. It's not because of a political or terrorism consideration. Have I answered your question?
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes, I guess, thanks.
TIM SEBASTIAN
The lady up there at the back.
AUDIENCE Q (F)
Yes, the question is to speakers for the motion, which is that after listing all flaws to the Western media, would there not be at least a lesson to learn for Arab media as to what not to do and how to avoid the same pitfalls?
TIM SEBASTIAN
Marc Lynch.
MARC LYNCH
Well, actually a number of people have raised the point about the problems of market-seeking media organisations and Khaled was arguing that that led to sensationalism and the like. It's a major problem because if states running the media doesn't work and if the market determining outcomes doesn't work, it's not exactly clear what will, so it's hard to know exactly where to go with that particular comparison.
TIM SEBASTIAN
Khaled.
KHALED HROUB
I would add something actually. I agree with you. There are some things that we have to refrain from doing in the Arab media, but I can't see the point why to go back to the West and do our homework there and come back to the Arab world and say, 'Yes, they are doing this and that and we can do it.' I myself, I criticise broadcasting the tapes fully. In the newspaper I criticise my own channel, Al Jazeera channel, and this is recorded. I said broadcasting them at length is wrong, and this is because so many reasons, but now when we only broadcast the news, I think, 'Yes, I agree with them.' I mean, we can fix it internally. We have our own minds and we can fix it, we have our own self-criticism as well. This is the mechanism that I am calling for, not to go back to the West as if like students and children and ask for lessons.

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TIM SEBASTIAN
All right. We've come to the point in the proceedings, ladies and gentlemen, where we're going to vote on the motion, 'This House believes that the Arab media need no lessons in journalism from the West.' Would you please take your voting devices. If you want to vote for the motion, will you press button one, the yellow button. If you want to vote against, will you press button two, the red button, and will you just do it once now. You don't need to keep on pressing, because through the wonders of modern science, your vote will be sent straight to the computer and we should get the results very, very shortly. Votes should be coming up now on the screen behind me. We have 68.3% against the motion, 31.7% for the motion. The motion has been decidedly rejected. Thank you very much. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it just remains for me to thank our distinguished panellists for coming tonight, to thank you, the audience, for coming. We'll be back again next month with another edition of The Doha Debates. Until then, do have a safe journey home, take care and we'll see you soon. Thank you very much indeed. Good night.

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