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O 050547Z MAY 08
FM AMEMBASSY ABU DHABI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0919
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE
RUEHAS/AMEMBASSY ALGIERS 0254
RUEHEG/AMEMBASSY CAIRO 1389
RUEHDM/AMEMBASSY DAMASCUS 0906
RUEHAM/AMEMBASSY AMMAN 0841
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 1275
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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 ABU DHABI 000549 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ARP; NEA/PPD 
POSTS FOR PAO 
LONDON FOR SREEBNY 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL KDEM KMDR SCUL PGOV KPAO AE
SUBJECT: DUBAI'S ARAB MEDIA FORUM: HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND LOW 
EXPECTATIONS 
 
Sensitive but unclassified; please protect accordingly. 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY:  The Dubai Press Club organized the Arab Media 
Forum April 23 and 24, 2008, focusing on the theme "Bridging Arab 
Media Through Technology".  Well-attended workshops covered the 
spectrum of technological change in regional media.  UAE government 
officials declared the Forum a success in establishing Dubai as a 
global media hub, even though the event was smaller and lower in 
profile than the previous year.  Lively panel discussions with 
audience Q&A revealed that the struggle between government and the 
media over issues of control and liberty goes on, and gave voice to 
a common perception that lack of autonomy, independence and full 
freedom of expression continue to be the real, and very low-tech, 
hurdles to regional media development.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (U) The Dubai Press Club organized the Arab Media Forum April 23 
and 24, 2008, focusing on the theme "Bridging Arab Media Through 
Technology".  This is a joint Public Diplomacy Abu Dhabi/Dubai 
Public Diplomacy Hub report. 
 
¶3. (U) The tech-heavy schedule featured workshops on how Arab media 
are responding to new technologies, the interface between IT and 
media organizations and institutions, and the constraints and 
boundaries of new media technology.  One session devoted to 
screening two short documentaries from Iraq (introduced by Iraqi 
government spokesperson Ali Dabbagh) and the Palestinian territories 
(introduced by Palestinian democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti) was 
a study in contrasts.  Dabbagh presented a short film praising the 
diversity and freedom of media in the new Iraq.  He was met with 
skepticism, and all comments from the floor focused on how bad 
things are in Iraq, despite Dabbagh's stated evidence to the 
contrary.  The audience received enthusiastically Barghouti's short 
film focusing on the violence and difficulties that journalists 
working in the Palestinian territories face and his comments 
decrying Israeli and U.S. policy in the region. 
 
¶4. (U) Another session, moderated by Al-Arabiya news anchor Muntaha 
al-Ramahi, debated the Arab Media Charter adopted February 12, 2008 
by Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo.  Panel member Salah 
Aeddine Maaoui, Director General of the Arab States Broadcasting 
Union (ASBU), defended the Arab Media Charter before an audience 
that was not buying it.  One audience member denounced the ASBU as a 
"do-nothing" entity, to Maaoui's evident irritation.  Panelist 
Mahmoud Shamam, a member of the Board of Directors of Al-Jazeera 
(which has been outspoken in denouncing the charter), deflated 
Maaoui's suggestion to make it a full-blown regulatory mechanism. 
Shamam said he would trust such a mechanism in Europe, where a 
credible judicial system exists, and his subsequent question on 
whether anyone in the audience believed such a system existed in the 
Arab world provoked open laughter.  Shamam dismissed the charter as 
an anachronism, one that would be impossible to implement in a world 
where the media is increasingly diverse and uncontrollable.  Fellow 
panelist Al-Arabiya News Director Nakhle El-Hage agreed, saying that 
the charter was a poor effort by Information Ministers to justify 
their jobs, and that in this new media environment, no one any 
longer understands what the job of Information Minister entails. 
Humorously, former Kuwaiti Information Minister Dr. Sa'ad Al-Ajami, 
present in the audience, rose to say that after nearly two years in 
the job, he himself had no idea what his job was and quit to return 
to teaching at the university. 
 
¶5. (U) Algerian blogger Esam Hamoud (www.hamoudstudio.com) picked up 
the theme of "uncontrollable" media during his presentation on the 
spread of internet-based media.  Hamoud suggested that fewer 
constraints and less self-censorship in cyberspace would, within two 
to three years, propel blogs significantly ahead of traditional 
newspapers in the timeliness, efficiency, accuracy and freedom of 
expression in sharing information.  He noted the uncensored nature 
of the news on blogs, and particularly highlighted the use of raw, 
unfiltered video and audio as a source of greater trustworthiness. 
[Note: the issue of sourcing and fact checking was given 
considerably less attention, and it is worth noting that the three 
most prominent news events in the UAE in the past two weeks have 
been the launch of three quite traditional newspapers: The National, 
the International Herald Tribune, and an Abu Dhabi-based version of 
The Financial Times.  End note.]  There was a lengthy debate on the 
use of Facebook in Egypt, specifically how one woman's cause had a 
huge and concrete effect on public opinion, leading to calls for a 
 
ABU DHABI 00000549  002 OF 003 
 
 
nation-wide strike.  Najat Rushdie of the UNDP presented a detailed 
study showing that a majority of youth and women in the region use 
chat rooms, blogs, and social networking tools like Facebook to 
express their true opinions free from social control and coercion. 
Additional debate centered on whether and how governments could 
manage these phenomena, and whether they were truly authentic 
expressions of popular opinion or open to outside manipulation. 
 
¶6. (U) The challenges of new media were raised in different guises. 
Established Arab journalists clearly worry that internet and 
broadband/digital media will overtake and overwhelm traditional 
print, television, and radio.  Others, including the international 
participants (mostly from India and the UK), stressed that in this 
brave new world of journalism, the link between medium and message 
is broken, with the message now independent of the medium. 
Journalists therefore need to focus on the message, and realize that 
the medium could change or vary according to the audience and 
technological realities.  Participants highlighted both 
possibilities and concerns.  On the positive side, some felt that 
digital media made news and events truly international in scope and 
coverage, and empowered media to develop special relationships and 
niches rather than dealing only with mass consumption.  Other 
participants, however, expressed concern that the "false intimacy" 
of cyberspace actually creates a distance between the media and the 
public, and also noted the potential problems of a new media that 
has enormous breadth, but very limited depth. 
 
¶7. (U) Freedom of expression was a recurrent theme of the panel 
discussions and provoked the strongest audience reactions of any 
theme.  Issam Dari, the Chief Editor of Syrian newspaper Tisreen, 
made the startling comment that "there are no journalists in Syrian 
prisons", which had the moderator quite nearly jumping out of her 
chair to challenge him and ask about imprisoned Syrian journalist 
Michel Kilo.  Dari's reponse, that Kilo is not a journalist and 
therefore does not count, provoked shock and outrage from the 
audience.  One member said it was a shame that some people (i.e., 
Dari) passed themselves off as journalists when they were clearly 
paid government spokespeople.  In another session, Ahmad Al Sheikh, 
a prominent media advisor to UAE Vice President and Dubai Ruler 
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, provoked puzzlement and laughter arguing 
that all media in Dubai is commercially run and not 
government-owned, and that there is no disturbing news aired or 
published in Dubai or the UAE because only good things happen here. 
 
 
¶8. (U) Some organizations used the Forum as an opportunity to unveil 
future development plans.  Most prominently, Al Jazeera Arabic 
announced that it will be opening its first bureau in Saudi Arabia 
in the next few months, as a result of recent Saudi-Qatari 
reconciliation.  The first "journalism" school in Riyadh is also 
planned to open soon, in response to the perceived need to train 
Saudi journalists to cope with new technologies and new media. 
There are also plans to open a new journalism and broadcast center 
in Manama. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid presided at the official 
opening, during which his son, Dubai Deputy Ruler Sheikh Maktoum bin 
Mohammed bin Rashid, gave the inaugural address.  Sheikh Maktoum 
underlined the Arab Media Forum's importance as a regional and 
international dialogue platform, noting that "Dubai has excelled in 
all sectors, establishing itself as a leading global media hub." 
Nonetheless, we heard complaints from several journalists that the 
event was much smaller and lower in profile than the previous year. 
An event that in 2007 had consumed the expansive Madinat Jumeirah 
complex was reduced by half and squeezed into the meeting room 
section of the Monarch Hotel.  Dubai Press Club Chairwoman Mona 
Ghanem al-Murri (also the wife of Minister for Cabinet Affairs 
Mohammed Gergawi) told us that the event was scaled back to improve 
quality.  Apart from the panel members, however, there were fewer 
media executives and working journalists than in past years, and 
their lack of enthusiasm was evident. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Some of the institutional ties of the organizers and 
sponsors provoked our interest.  The Dubai Press Club is a creation 
of the Government of Dubai, established specifically to foster 
regional dialogue on Arab Media.  The Arab Media Forum is, itself, a 
chartered corporation, part of Arab Media Services Group.  That 
company is affiliated with (and does PR work for) Dubai Pearl, one 
 
ABU DHABI 00000549  003 OF 003 
 
 
of the major sponsors of the Forum and developer of an extensive 
tract of real estate at the base of the Palm Jumeirah artificial 
island project, in the heart of Internet City, Media City and 
Knowledge Village.  Dubai Pearl, along with those other properties, 
is part of the holding company TECOM, which in turn is part of the 
Dubai Holdings group, headed by Gergawi. 
 
¶11. (SBU) The opening panel on transformations breaking the 
traditional mold of Arabic media may well have revealed the real and 
continuing impediment to media in the region, and set an ironic tone 
for a conference designed to showcase high-tech, forward-leaning, 
development.  Moderator Mohamed Fahad al-Harthi, the Editor of 
Al-Jamila and Sayidaty magazines, asked Showtime Executive Vice 
President and Chief Operating Officer Danny Bottoms to comment on 
his experience as the chief of a multimedia conglomerate.  Bottoms 
said that since Showtime was a purveyor of very traditional content 
(films), via some of the oldest transmission technology known 
(satellite dishes), and in one direction without interactivity with 
the client, he did not believe it would be accurate to use the term 
"multimedia".  During the same session, Al-Hayat journalist Jihad 
Al-Khazen, one of the region's most respected writers and 
intellectuals in the field of communication, was asked whether 
modern technological developments would be the solution to remaining 
developmental obstacles.  Al-Khazen, implying that technology was 
neither the problem nor the solution, identified the two principal 
obstacles: a "lack of financing", i.e. independent sources of 
financing not tied to prominent interests or governments; and the 
reality that "the Arab media has no impact because it lacks 
credibility based on real freedom." 
 
QUINN