Excellent roster of speakers in Doha for the Al-Jazeera Forum’s “unplugged” day on new media and I unfairly assumed 
that the opener from AJ’s director-general Wadah Khanfar would be bland welcoming pleasantries. In fact Khanfar spoke strongly of Al-Jazeera’s importance in raising standards of journalism in the Middle East in general and in the Gulf in particular.
He then announced a 4-part “initiative” from Al-Jazeera on internet freedom. I’d link to the press release if I could find it (one version here), but the main points are:
- All AJ’s web content will be free and stay free.
- AJ’s human rights desk will act as a collecting point and campaign hub for freedom of expression cases and issues across the region.
- AJ’s training centre will work with other news media on the principles of professionalism to promote “independent free journalism” in the developing and Arab world.
- AJ will equip new media activists with cameras, smartphones and other hardware to boost grassroots journalism and will give this material priority on the screen.
Point 3 alone, never mind the rest, is huge and overdue agenda. A cynic might say that words are free but results cost more. And Khanfar seems to have something of a habit of announcing big “Al-Jazeera” initiatives. But AJ is now huge force in its own right in the Middle East and to see such a broadcaster putting its weight behind the good use of new media in a region where it could make a difference is a start at least.
To glimpse the difference that might yet be made take a look at the use which Mohamed El-Baradei, one of the most famous Egyptians in the world, needs to make of new media if he is to run against Hosni Mubarak for the Egyptian presidency next year. A significant part of the Egyptian print and broadcast media is under the formal or informal control of the government and it is not, to put it mildly, sympathetic to El-Baradei, a retired head of the International Atomic Energy Authority.
Tags: Al-Jazeera, Doha, Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed El Baradei, Wadah Khanfar
