This House believes that Arab media needs no lessons in journalism from the West
Tuesday January 31 2006
MOTION REJECTED
by 32% to 68%
Details
The latest episode of the Doha Debates marked yet another surprising result with 68.3% of participants voting against the motion ‘This House believes that Arab media need no lessons in journalism from the West’.
Speaking for the motion, Khaled Hroub, the host of a weekly program on Al-Jazeera TV, described Western media as no example for the Arab world. He accused them of being "sensational" focusing on sex, fashion and celebrities, as well as being racist towards non-Westerners. "The mainstream media in the West is in very bad shape because it aligns itself with the ugly western politics," he argued.
Joining him to support the motion was Arab media expert, Marc Lynch. Mr. Lynch, who is also Associate Professor for Political Science at Williams College in the US, praised the merits of Arab media today, calling it "genuinely revolutionary". He argued that Arab media has a passion and a wider diversity of views that is quite superior to what is seen on American political talk shows.
Against the motion and winners of the debate were Abdullah Schleifer and Mona Eltahawy. Mr. Schleifer, a veteran American journalist who covered the Middle East for more than two decades for NBC News, Jeune Afrique and The New York Times, and has recently been appointed Al Arabiya's Washington DC bureau chief. New York-based Mona Eltahawy writes a weekly column for Asharq al-Awsat newspaper and is a frequent contributor to opinion pages in the US and abroad.
Mr. Schleifer pointed out that the best of Arab media today had learned their skills were from the West. "It is not a terrible thing to learn from wherever the sphere of knowledge is at that particular moment" Mr. Schleifer stated.
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