AJMI - Doha

Al Jazeera Media Institute concluded, last Saturday, " Arab Media Forum and Global South:  Independence and narrative restoration” which lasted for three days, punctuated by many serious discussions around the future of Arabic narrative and the current conditions of Arab media.

It worth mentioning that around 70 members from different Arab institutions in 17 countries attended the forum to join Global South Dialogue and to criticize the prevailing model in journalism, and attended sessions of experts who tried to deconstruct general concepts in the field of narrative and public space.

Dr. Hassan Obaid, a researcher in social movements affairs, led a session to shed light on   "Global South, Emancipation and Image Recovery" where he explained that construction of the narrative is based on three basic dimensions: knowledge, history, domination and power in addition to clarifying concepts of Global South in both Western contest and editorial contexts.

In "Building Truth in Western Media" session, Ahmed Abu Hamad, a member of the team of Al Jazeera Institute deconstructed concept of truth, which was formed according to Western philosophical schools and largely contributed to consolidating understanding of journalistic work as proven facts.

In "Funding and Independence" session, Dr. Rawan Jayyousi from Jordan and journalist Ghada Haddad from Lebanon spoke about the impact of funding on newsrooms and means of negotiation between media institutions and financiers to ensure independence of journalistic work.

In a session dealing with "Problems of Arab media and self-criticism", journalist Mohamed Al-Yousifi from Tunisia spoke about prospects and ways to develop in-depth journalistic work needed by the Arab public. Anas Hassan and Abdul Allah Al-Rasheed shed light on endeavor and attempt of Digital Sector in launching Atheer Podcast Platform.

Participants put forward a number of recommendations that focus on the need to increase cooperation between local press institutions to reduce cost, achieve sustainability and work on exchanging experiences among journalists.