US embassy cable - 05DOHA1803

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DOHA 001803 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP 
INFO NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY 
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE 
TUNIS AND ABU DHABI FOR MEPI OFFICE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL, KPAO, KMPI, QA, ALJAZEERA 
SUBJECT: MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA MEDIA TRAINING CENTER 
DIRECTOR 
 
REF: DOHA 1786 AND PREVIOUS 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: PAO met 10/31 with Mahmoud Abdel Hadi, 
Director of the Al Jazeera Media Training and Development 
Center located in Doha, now in its second year of operation. 
Abdel Hadi said the focus of the Center is regional and that 
1,500 Arab journalists have participated in the Center's 
programs this year, with training provided by British and 
French journalism institutions. The Center has a developing 
relationship with the University of Missouri's School of 
Journalism. Abdel Hadi attended MEPI's October 2004 Media 
Strategies workshop in Abu Dhabi and said the Center is open 
to cooperation with MEPI. End summary. 
 
2. (SBU) Abdel Hadi reports directly to Al Jazeera Managing 
Director Wadah Khanfar. A journalist of Palestinian origin, 
Abdel Hadi came to Doha in 1998 to work for Islam Online. 
(Note: A popular Islamic affairs website with wide 
international readership headquartered in Doha, its titular 
head is Muslim cleric Yusuf Al Qaradawi. End note). He then 
moved to Al Jazeera where he was instrumental in setting up 
the Al Jazeera website. In 2003, he began setting up the AJ 
Training Center, which he has directed since its inception in 
early 2004. 
 
3. (SBU) Abdel Hadi told PAO the AJ Training and Development 
Center ("the Center") was formally established in February 
2004 and is now approaching the end of its second year. With 
20 permanent administrative staff, the Center occupies a 
leased villa in Doha's Al Sadd neighborhood, pending 
construction of a permanent site closer to the AJ studios in 
the Markhiya area of Doha. The Center is well-equipped with 
state of the art media technology. The Center's mission is 
regional in scope and it conducts training and consultation 
activities both in Doha and in other Arab countries. The 
Center has no training staff of its own but imports trainers 
on an as-needed basis from various British/French/US 
journalism institutions. The Center currently has memoranda 
of understanding with the UK's Thomson Foundation and 
France's "Ecole Superieure de Journalisme de Lille," said 
Abdel Hadi. He said the Center also has a relationship with 
the University of Missouri's School of Journalism (MU 
Professor Emeritus Roger Gafke is scheduled to teach a 
train-the-trainers course at the Center in Doha on November 
20) and has recently proposed a memorandum of understanding 
with Missouri. The Center is also exploring possibility of 
signing an MOU with Japan's NHK news service. In addition, 
the Center conducts courses in cooperation with international 
organizations, such as a recent course in documentary 
production offered in cooperation with the International 
Center for Journalism (ICFJ). The Center's language of 
instruction is English, with interpretation provided as 
needed for participants. 
 
4. (SBU) According to its promotional brochure, the Center's 
overall mission is "to contribute to the development of Arab 
and international media." The Center provides training and 
consultation in television, radio, print media, e-journalism, 
media marketing, media planning and media management. 
Training and consultation take place in Doha but the Center 
also designs and implements programs in the field. It has 
conducted extensive training and consultation for Sudan 
Television, as well as programs in the UAE and Oman. Abdel 
Hadi says he has visited both Yemen and Djibouti to design 
programs for their state media operations, although both 
projects have run into funding problems. The Center is 
non-profit and structures its fee schedule with the aim of 
breaking even, so it cannot provide free training, said Abdel 
Hadi. Training participants are almost exclusively Arab 
journalists, although the Center once ran a course for 
journalists from Kyrgyzstan, sponsored and paid for by the 
Qatar National Charity Association, he said. 
 
5. (U) Abdel Hadi provided the following statistics for the 
Center: 1,100 participants last year; 1,500 participants this 
year (in Doha and in the field); 67 courses conducted last 
year; 105 courses conducted this year; 5 courses conducted 
outside Qatar last year; 12 courses outside Qatar this year. 
The majority of the participants in the first year were Al 
Jazeera staff, but now most are non-Al Jazeera journalists. 
 
MEPI Cooperation? 
----------------- 
 
6. (SBU) Under "Activities of the Center in its first year" 
AJTDC's promotional brochure prominently mentions the fact 
that the Center "participated in the workshop organised by 
the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) on media 
strategies in the Middle East and North Africa." Abdel Hadi 
said he much appreciated the strategic approach taken by the 
2004 MEPI workshop. He said strategic thinking on media 
management and reform is much needed in the region, where 
very often donor countries make disparate and uncoordinated 
contributions to a problem that really needs a comprehensive 
strategy."You end up with lots of workshops here and there, 
but no results. To be successful with media reform, you have 
to think strategically," he said. He said the Center is 
currently cooperating with UNESCO to produce a model media 
law, for example. Once the model law is completed, the Center 
would begin to think about strategies for introducing it into 
Arab countries around the region. There would be 
opportunities for cooperation with programs such as MEPI 
here, he said. Other opportunities for cooperation with MEPI 
might include assisting the implementation of programs for 
poorer countries in the region, such as the one designed by 
the Center for Djibouti, which is currently stalled for lack 
of resources, he added. 
 
Problems of the Arab media 
-------------------------- 
 
7. (SBU) Despite minor differences from country to country, 
the state of the Arab media is pretty much the same 
throughout the region, said Abdel Hadi. To a great extent, 
the Arab media is still stuck in the old mindframe which 
operated on the assumption that the national audience could 
be controlled through the state media. This is no longer the 
case, he said. The national audience has become 
internationalized, but media managers in Arab countries are 
failing to acknowledge and to deal with this change. They do 
not understand the mission or the responsibility of the media 
and continue to produce programming under the old paradigm, 
which views state media as a propaganda apparatus for the 
government and not a medium for monitoring government 
performance. "The irony is, they are not meeting the goals of 
their government by doing this," he said. Current media 
managers do not undertake studies to analyze their 
effectiveness in reaching their audience and never ask 
"Should we offer a new proposal to the state?" he said. If, 
for example, you find that you are spending 10 million 
dollars to reach five percent of the national audience, and 
those five percent are merely watching the main news 
bulletin, "you have to recalculate. You should even consider 
'to be or not to be' -- should we continue to exist?" But 
this does not happen in the Arab world, he said. Media 
managers simply want to keep their jobs and don't want to 
make changes that could jeopardize their jobs and the status 
quo. 
 
8. (SBU) Abdel Hadi noted that there is a definite 
generational gap among Arab journalists. In many cases, it's 
too late for the older generation, he said. Changing mindsets 
requires a sweeping removal of old ideas, and this is not 
easy to accomplish. "It can be very discouraging to work with 
older journalists, but what a joy to work with the younger 
ones!" Abdel Hadi said. About 40 percent of the participants 
who go through the Center are in their 30s or younger, and 
these are the future of Arab journalism, he observed. Some of 
them are discouraged when they return to their home countries 
and are stopped from implementing what they have learned by 
the older generation of managers, so the Center tries to run 
a parallel track, reaching out to both journalists and to 
their managers, to inculcate universally accepted standards 
of journalism, said Abdel Hadi. 
 
Pilgrimage visas for Al Jazeera staff 
------------------------------------- 
 
9. (SBU) Abdel Hadi noted in passing that it is next to 
impossible for Al Jazeera staff to obtain Saudi visas to 
perform Umra (the minor pilgrimage to Mecca) as private 
citizens and that they also face significant difficulties in 
getting regular Hajj pilgrimage visas from the Saudis. 
 
Al Jazeera Radio - 107.7 FM 
--------------------------- 
 
10. (U) Abdel Hadi mentioned that live sound track for Al 
Jazeera TV is available via FM radio in Doha on 107.7 FM, 
which has proved to be the case, although signal quality is 
somewhat choppy. 
UNTERMEYER