Of Arab Media Forums

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It was the Arab Media Forum back in April 2007 wot started me off blogging in the first place. With this here post, in fact.

This came to mind as I stood in the Madinat Jumeirah conference centre, attending the 2015 Arab Media Forum.

I'm getting very bored indeed with the 'Social media vs journalism and 'social media is important' conversations, I must say.

That's probably my key insight for you, people. I think I might have Lebanese takeaway tonight to celebrate.

No post in three weeks and then this? I know. But you know my mantra by now...

No Refunds.

Arab Media Forum Faces New Media Challenges. Shock Horror.

This is in no way a gratuitous plug for the 'book of the blog,' you understand.

This blog, as readers of Fake Plastic Souks - The Glory Years will know, started around The Arab Media Forum 2007. This was mere coincidence, not by any means a result of the forum which I have never attended and likely never will attend. In fact, as the first post attests, we were sitting at home eating Lebanese takeaway.

There seems to be even more intense debate at this year's forum (judging from the reports one sees on Twitter) about the 'role of new media' and all that. It's an interesting debate - some may argue taking place a little late in the day - particularly in this region, where reporting is so very dangerous and the conflicts so very real - and, as all conflicts necessarily are - polarised and messy. Making sense of these things is tough, dangerous and hard - journalism, true journalism, is a thankless and wearying job. But some people are just plagued with that need to delve down to uncover the truth and then get it out there into our hands so we can make more informed judgements about the world around us.

Shame there are all too few of these in the Middle East, but that's the breaks.

The Great Debate, of course, has moved on. It's no longer about whether digital media are relevant, but whether traditional media is relevant. You'd hardly have thought that from the Forum, which includes the session, "Digital Media: Authority Without Responsibility". Apart from a few 'digital heads' the debate at the Forum remains principally analogue and although there are nods to a process of transition, there is no sense that this transition could easily well take the form of disintermediation.

The Forum's first session was, in fact, "Conventional Media vs. New Media" - the program outlines the problem as this:

News industry is remarkably challenged by the emerging “new media” platforms. This synthetic prelim produced unprecedented dilemma for traditional journalism and undoubtedly added more complications.

Quite.

Of course, what the debate lacks is a sense of where humanity's eyeballs are going. Are people consuming as much local media as before? Does it carry as much weight with the public? Is the Arab News media seen as credible compared to online and first hand sources? Where are people going for news these days? Gulf News or the Daily Mail Online?

That research could have underpinned a viable and vibrant debate framed by the scale of the challenge facing print media and the practicses of print media journalism. Events in Syria and even the recent Beirut bombing which I posted about at length here, comparing Twitter to a Lorenzian water wheel, have shown that trying to adapt conventional 'big' media reporting to Twitter and YouTube can have disastrous effects - and have arguably eroded the weight we give to mainstream media. Never has there been more need for careful, considered journalism - and never have we seen so little of just that.

Instead, we have the same old ground being gone over - with a distinct under-representation of the 'new media' everyone is so upset about (although nice to see Maha from Google there). Although it's nice for everyone from the region's media to get together for a chat, I can't help but feel the actual eyeballs have, well, moved on...

The Arab Media Forum's Elephant

Image via WikipediaThere's going to be a pachyderm* in the room at this year's Arab Media Forum 2011, the event that sparked the very birth of this little blog. It's not a new elephant, but it's been getting bigger every year. This year, it's going to be interesting to see if a single delegate gets to squeeze in.

It's the Internet and the way in which our media landscape is not only being changed, but torn up and remodelled - not just by social media, but by our new information consumption habits. It is not, according to today's Gulf News and previous reports, a topic up for discussion. In fact, Gulf News' subs reach a new low today. Failing to stand up a headline with the story is one thing, but when you're failing to stand up sub-heads, my but you're in trouble. The sub-head in question, 'Social Media' is followed in the story by anything but any mention of social media at all.

The GN story's headline sort of frames the story: "Forum to look at impact of Arab Spring on media".

Isn't it interesting that the Arab Spring (sic) is having an impact on media rather than the other way around? I do wonder if the many portentous debates between 'important media figures' will include the appalling mendacity of the region's media when faced with the challenge of change - not least the Egyptian media's craven cries of 'Lalalalala' when faced with the stark facts of Tahrir.

Looking beyond the half inch of Methodist near-beer that is the debate about the Arab Spring and its impact on our media, you'd perhaps be forgiven for wondering why the impact of the online revolution that preceded, helped to drive and then was accelerated by that self-same spring isn't worth debating and highlighting. Perhaps it's not 'media' within the narrow definition of a Press Club. Although the people served by the media are increasingly deserting the paper form for online sources - and changing the way they consume media and the types of information they access.

It's a fundamental change in human communication that has helped to reshape our region, driving change across our societies and challenging many aspects of our media - including the practice of journalism, legislation, individual and collective freedoms, activism and responsibility. There is no greater challenge to our media, in fact. But it is obviously not the right 'media' for this forum. This year, we haven't even seen reports of a token blogger to lighten the mix.

Giddy up, Jumbo!

* Apropos of nothing, many, many moons ago, Gulf News reported on an mistreated elephant at Dubai Zoo. The picture caption, thanks to that strangest and most malign force, the GN Subs, referred to 'the unfortunate pachyderm', which triggered a scramble at Spot On to see who could fit the word into a piece of client work that day. Carrington won with brilliance, although I don't remember quite how.

The Unbearable Ubiquity of Twitter

Image via CrunchBaseI have now seen a number of friends taking nervously to Twitter, stumbling around for a while blindly and then giving up on it only to return a while later and find things generally easier and more productive than they ever would have thought. From being critics of the 'I don't want to know what you had for breakfast' school, they have become rabid adherents.

The increasing ubiquity of Twitter fascinates me. Its role in spreading news, information and opinion with blinding speed becomes ever greater - from small events of interest to only a few (Google's Android Market will expand to 99 countries, excluding the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - the region's three largest markets. Thanks, Twitter) through to its role in the 'Arab Spring' alongside cousin/rival/deadly enemy Facebook.

All this stuff is leaving 'traditional media' rather racing to catch up. The Arab Media Forum this year, Gulf News tells us, is to discuss the way in which events in the region have impacted regional media - rather tellingly, there's no discussion of media's role in those events.

I was disconcerted while in the UK to hear Sky News telling me that "the British Foreign Secretary has tweeted he is to meet Hillary Clinton". That one really gave me pause for thought - a national news channel reporting on a tweet? And it's now commonplace for journalists to 'stand up' stories on tweets - not just the Hollywood gossip tabloid stuff, but serious news stories. Mind you, I was equally disconcerted (not to say amused) to learn that Pippa Middleton's bum had its own Facebook page before the wedding was over!

One area where I do have increasing issues is in media reporting the weight or movement of public opinion by citing Twitter. One story in Gulf News today on the possible accession of Jordan and Morocco to the Gulf Co-Operation Council (the Middle East equivalent of the EEC) tells that 'a number of Twitter users specifically targeted Morocco for criticism...' It's by no means the only example of media citing Twitter as 'public opinion'. Fanboy that I am, it's not.

While undoubtedly true, 'a number of tweets' is hardly empirical evidence of a shift or trend in public opinion. But then we're all beginning to accept it: if it's not on Twitter, it didn't happen, aren't we?

Talking of traditional media, today's Gulf News piece on the newspaper that removed Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomasoni from the now-famous 'White House Situation Room' OBL picture because they may be considered 'sexually suggestive' is rather coy about quite WHICH newspaper did this. It was this newspaper, a Brooklyn based orthodox Chasidic Jewish newspaper. Presumably GN felt it couldn't for some mad reason use the word 'Jewish'. I do feel somewhat misled - I'd originally thought it was perhaps a Saudi paper... but I had to find out the crucial (remember 'when what when where why how'?) details myself online.

Context and analysis? Nah, I'd rather trust Twitter...

Citizen Journalism. Bah.

Image by bunky's pickle via Flickr

Another Arab Media Forum already! It hardly seems a year since the last one. It's now become traditional for me to celebrate the birth of this little bloggy thing (with this post) during the 2007 forum, as it is that very event wot was taking place as I first hit the 'Publish Post' key.

This year's forum features more social media stuff than ever before, but that's not really terribly difficult as it has previously had the token panel or two, last year there was even a blogger. I have to confess I didn't bother going this year. It didn't really seem terribly relevant - many of the discussions are taking place in an environment where change is driving a huge movement away from traditional media sources - even here in the Middle East where we are, as all agree, lagging. Broadcast is less challenged than print, but the low quality of regional printed news media will just exacerbate the speed of movement.


I was interested to see that 'a participant in a session on citizen journalism' (Gulf News didn't bother naming him/her) talked about the National Paints fire, the news of which was broken by our very own Albert Dias (@albertdias), quickly followed up by a Twitpic (Twitpic or it didn't happen is increasingly the standard).  We managed to get Albert on the 'phone for the opening of the Dubai Today Radio Show which made for a brilliant and dramatic opening to the show as Albert provided us with a cogent and intelligent commentary from the scene, 200 metres away from the holocaust that was devouring the huge paint store, his voice surprisingly calm against the background of explosions and sirens. And yes, BTW, I'm delighted we scooped GN online by at least 45 minutes.

So was this the 'citizen journalism' that the Forum was, yet again, debating? Well, not really. Albert wasn't a journalist, he was an eyewitness. It's just that he has access to much more efficient sharing networks: breaking the story on Twitter doesn't mean reporting it. It's just that we get access to the cold, hard facts that are the stuff of journalism. The journalism came when we decided to broadcast his voice, questioning him with a listenership, and principles of reporting, in mind.

That role, the role of taking the evidence and collecting it to give as rounded and objective a picture as possible, will never change. More of the responsibility for it is being put in our hands as we sift through sources of hard news and data, shared sources of fact and opinion. But we'll always need people to bring it together for us. It's just that we're going to want them to be online and, ideally, to be independent and have a sound reputation. Mendacity, in this environment, is not really an option- and trust networks, reputational networks, will become the cornerstone to popularity, and therefore revenue, into the future.

Journalism doesn't actually need huge publishing houses and hundreds of makeup artists and printing presses and all the rest of it. It doesn't even need massive recording studios, satellites and specialised receivers. The networks in place today, even with the lack of lower prices and higher bandwidth in our tragically under-served region, provide journalists all the access they need to inform and serve their audiences. But they will never again be the only source of information available to consumers.

A debate they might just get around to having next year. Or maybe not until the presses finally grind to a halt and they realise that nobody cares anymore.

The Arab Media Awards Changes

Image by sebFlyte via Flickr

Changes have been announced to The Arab Media Awards, a move that at least partly explains the stream of decidedly odd tweets emanating from the Dubai Press Club Twitter handle yesterday.

According to reports today, the awards are going to change to take more account of online media and young professionals. The inclusion of young journalists has been accomplished by adding a new award for, wait for it, 'Young Arab Journalist'.

As for online, the new focus for the awards, recognising the tectonic shifts that are shaking the world of print media around the world, has been accomplished by removing the word 'print' from the name of the awards.

If the story is complete, then there's no new award or category of awards for online journalism. Just the removal of the word 'print'...

So that's it. That's the evidence that these awards now recognise online journalism and which justifies Gulf News' headline, "Revamped award to cover all aspects of journalism".

Sentiment on the The Arab Tweet

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I didn’t attend the ‘New Media’ session of The Arab Media Forum yesterday ( I served my time in the morning, alright?), but then I didn’t need to. Several people I respect were in the audience and were Tweeting highlights throughout the session. One of them was a colleague, one was another PR person I chat to and two were media people I know well.

I can wait for further analysis of the session, I can take my time. I got the high points, the headlines, as they happened – and from several different sources and viewpoints at that.

The people whose commentary on the proceedings was influencing hundreds, in fact going into the thousands, of people were not the ones on the stage talking at the Forum, they were in the audience. Between them, the Tweeters were talking to an audience of more people than the guys onstage with the microphones. Sure, the BBC will broadcast the session in a while – but we’ve already discussed it, deliberated it, shared it ‘on the record’ with the entire Internet and moved on.

And if that doesn’t give you pause for thought, I give up.

Incidentally, the Twitter users were likely the only people in the room full of hundreds of media people that knew, as they sat down to the session, that Roxanne Saberi had been released from the terrible, feared Evin prison in Tehran – that her father was actually on the way to pick her up at that very moment. The breaking news was flying around Twitter as the conference session started. Oh! And also the news that not only had the Pope called for a two-state solution in Palestine but that the Palestinian Authority press centre had been forced to shut down by the Israelis.

And it doesn’t take a newsroom of hundreds to do that. Or a ‘publishing house’. Or a ‘printing press’. Or an ‘editor in chief’.

Oddly, our little band of Twitterers probably represented the few people in the room that actually, genuinely cared about news like Roxanne Saberi and the PA media centre. Freedom is an Internet thing – the ‘old world’ is more reconciled to its lack.

So what did happen in the ‘new media’ session?

The 'traditional' media, debated their credibility and asked The Lone Blogger why he blogged ("Did you always want to be a journalist?"), comforting themselves with the fact that 'citizen journalism' wasn't as reliable as a 'real journalist'.

They, and Seymour Hersh, appear to have missed the point. The world is changing - it's not about bloggers wanting to be journalists. It's much, much bigger than that and it's time that many of our media woke up to the smell of coffee.

BTW, a Gulf News (600g) survey today, commissioned from IPSOS of some 2,000 people, showed that 76.2 of respondents strongly agreed with the statement 'The Internet helps me to keep up to date with the latest news'. GN's headline for the piece?

"Gulf News Stays Ahead of the Pack"

Which is fine, as long as your pack's not heading for the edge of a cliff...

The Arab Media Forum

Image by madmonk via Flickr

Today marked the start of the 8th Arab Media Forum. I'm quite fond of said forum, if only because it marked the start of this blog, back with this post which has always made me smile when I read it.

So I'm a simpleton. Get over it.

The keynote address at this year's gig was given by the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. He said a number of interesting things and, thanks to the simultaneous translation, a couple of slightly strange ones. There was one passage about dark oceans and creatures feeding on each other that had me slightly bewildered, but we soon found the track again.

(Offtopic, Moussa said that he was impressed by the life and verve he found in Dubai after having read so many negative reports in international media. He got a laugh out of his host, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, which was nice to see to be honest.)

Moussa set the scene for the rest of the forum, making the point that the Arab World faced challenges in the evolution of its media, particularly with the transition taking place between online and print media, "The Arab World is still launching newspapers while elsewhere in the world, newspapers are failing" he said, talking about the movement of paper to electronic media.

Its funny that this thinking persists - that we're going to stop using paper and just move into being nicely regulateable and licensable entities, identifieable online media houses. It denies the very real atomisation that is taking place as a result of the boom in consumer generated media and content. The concept of media ownership is being redefined.

Just before Moussa came onstage, a panel session had taken place with, among distinguished others, Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor in Chief of Gulf News (540g), who pointed out that venerable, 150-year-old institutions like the great American newspapers were shutting down and wondered what would take their place.

As if the process of their decline wasn't being driven by their replacement.

Portentous statements will be made, great declarations will be delivered, many issues will be debated. But the winds of change sweeping around the world, the process of disintermediation and the tools that are driving new ways of sharing information, thoughts, collaboration and innovation are not going to be among the many things the Forum considers seriously. The Middle East media, remember, is still launching newspapers.

It's as if we're making a virtue of being behind the curve - a curve we continue to lag ever more as we fail to teach online skills in schools and retard adoption through protectionism, mad pricing and content blocking.

I get the feeling that this is going to be something of a theme for this forum which features just a single session on online media, tucked in at the end of day one's proceedings. This panel (led by the BBC's Hossam Al Sokkari) will feature Google's regional manager and is the reason the forum will get to hear from its one, lone, blogger - an Algerian called Issam Hamoud.

One social media figure among all those media glitterati in this two-day media-fest. One 'public voice'. One ambassador for the 'new media'.

It reminds me a little of Michael Moorcock's excellent Brothel In Rosenstrasse (The book is, incidentally, most certainly NSFW, part of its quirky charm). The enemy army is on the borders of the city, but life goes on inside the brothel, unchallenged for the moment by the changes taking place outside, a bright burning of licentiousness in negation of the great and inevitable truth that's all around.

Until, suddenly, everything is rapidly, inevitably swept away along with the world that existed before it.

Legacy media is not going to be killed by social media, despite the much-publicised declines and closures. But it is being transformed by it - and those who are not driving that change are likely going to be swept aside by it.

The Arab Media Forum has, IMHO, missed a trick. So, arguably, has the Arab Media.

But Amr Moussa knows what's going on, at least...

Ziggy

Sitting on an Air Arabia flight (perfectly pleasant, incidentally) and flicking through the inflight mag, when I saw an article on the Six Senses Hotel and Spa at Zighi Bay. This bay used to be a great weekend campsite, just off the Wadi Bih track up the Hajar mountains North of Dibba. It was only relatively recently that a tortuous track was cut up the hill past the army firing range that used to be up there, over the hill and down to the fishing village that always, always has me humming David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.

It was a lovely place to camp or picnic, Zighi Bay. Now I can pay nigh on a thousand bucks to ‘chill out’ on the self same beach.

The thing in the article that jarred with me was the claim that ‘there was a rudimentary, albeit treacherous, road that was regularly washed away by rains.’ The article goes on to say that there’s now a safe road to the bay, developed over eight months by the hotel. It somehow seems to me to frame this as a really positive benefit from the hotel's development, a selfless contribution.

Well, the fact is that there was a graded track up the hill and down to the village that was steep but perfectly serviceable and that I never saw washed away once. The villagers had accessed the bay by sea for time immemorial; they are fishermen. But the track was a fun drive, a tad precipitous, but fun. But it certainly wasn't up to the standard you'd need for hotel delivery vehicles. They HAD to build a new road for their own purposes.

It’s just a tiny thing, hardly worth bothering about. But it got up my nose for some reason.

Baywash.

Birthday

A year ago, with this post about the Arab Media Forum, I started this blog.

I think a celebration at the Thai Kitchen is in order!

White Paper Wiki

By the way, we put quite a lot of research work into into preparation for the session at the Arab Advisors Media and Convergence Conference, which resulted in us producing a White Paper document on what we found. It should make reasonably interesting reading for anyone involved in the Middle East regional ICT industry: please do feel free to download/distribute/extract from and/or link to it.

It’s posted here on a Wiki which should, if anybody gives a damn about increasing broadband penetration in the Middle East, attract more contributions, documentation, research and other useful stuff – anyone’s welcome to a password. I somehow suspect this won’t happen, but then perhaps I’m just far too cynical. Perhaps.

Lebanese Takeaway

Houmous
Fattoush
Tabbouleh
Sambousek Jibneh
Sis Kebab
Plate shawarma dajaj
Sujuk

Tonight the two of us eat like little kings for pennies, while the Arab Media Forum delegates continue their portentous declamations on the importance of fostering media freedom to ever smaller audiences until just two are left. Jackets off and staggering along the Madinat's waterways in their shirtsleeves under the early morning starlight, arm in arm, they rage about how it would have been so much better if Gamal Abdel Nasser had got the Yanks behind him instead of the useless bloody Sovs.