Aah Ya Beirut!-Part II-The Beirut Conference!

Ok, so I got back from Beirut on Tuesday last week, and I was asked not to wait long before I share the experience…

I apologise for taking more than week, but I had lots to catch up with at work..like you wouldn’t believe it! and there is also a conference that I’m taking part in organising in the spring next year that needed my immediate attention!

Anyhow, I arrived to Beirut on Friday night,it was the last day of the week,I was happily surprised to see the city so lively, see people out with their friends and family, despite the current instability in the country.I can’t believe though, that just as I came back from my trip, turmoil erupted again with the assassination of army general Francios Hajj!!. I went out with some friends myself and had a nice quick dinner at Zaatar W Zeit, a well known Lebanese fast food restaurant opposite to the American University in Beirut (AUB), then we headed to a party!.

I spent Saturday morning and afternoon wandering around the streets, trying to take pictures whenever possible to share them here, though sadly the city was annoyed by any camera flashing in most parts!, understandable since it is passing through a difficult time, here are some of the pictures I managed to take after asking police officers politely if I could take them!

The conference began on Sunday morning,December 9th, by an honorarium for Gebran Tueni, , an outstanding press freedom advocate, who was assassinated about a year go!It was held at Biel International Exhibition Centre in Beirut.The hall was full of people from various parts of the political and religious spectrum in Lebanon as well as representatives of international organisations, It was broadcasted live on major satellite TV channels in the region.

The event featured a variety of renowned figures from Lebanon, such as Ghassan Tueni (Gebran’s father) and the owner of An Nahar newspaper, singer Magida Al-Roumi delivered quite and emotional speech about her late friend Gebran, and his contribution to building reputable and free press in Lebanon.Gebran’s young daughter Nayla, delivered a very impressive speech addressing important issues about the future of Lebanon!.

Then we moved on to the first session, it was titled “Backsliders and Usual Suspects – the Latest Government Policies that Affect the Press”, that was rather a very intense panel featured journalists from Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, and Lebanon, who spoke about government policies taken against journalists, it generated quite hot discussions some of which were very interesting and informative, and with that session our first day came to an end.

The second day began with a very interesting session, in my opinion at least as a business oriented person, that was titled “Combining Editorial Independence with Commercial Success”, it featured the owner of my favourite newspaper in Jordan (Alghad),Mohamed Alayyan, a man I was very happy to meet!

His speech was very successful and informative, he was very specific and presented Al-ghad newspaper’s story in a very interesting way, though as expected people were more interested to hear about ATV than the newspaper!!, one funny thing happened was that a journalist from Mauritania accused him of being too commercial in his approach, something I found funny,because the panel topic was about “commercial success”, so in my opinion, it was professional of him to stick to the panel topic and not waste the audiences’ time by talking about irrelevant issues or over elaborating simple facts, like what some panelists did.

The session also featured another interesting journalist “Nadia Al Saqqaf”, the editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times, an independent newspaper published in English, she was also the winner of the Tueni Award for freedom of press last year, she gave an interesting example of commercially successful journalism, despite the fact that it only caters for the “elite” as she referred to them, and also for western residents in Yemen.

And then came our panel!, titled ” “Blogs, an Alternative Way of Telling the News “, before I talk about this panel, I must say I was a bit disappointed by the sudden changes that had occurred half an hour before the session started, we were informed by the moderator that one panelist , representing IT department at As-Safeer newspaper was added officially to the panel , and also two more people had short interventions to make during the session, a blogger from Lebanon, and a journalist from Tunisia, he also informed us that the time allowed for our panel was shortened due to the reason that the previous panel took more time than it should have!!.

As I initially intended to talk about Mideast Youth, it’s campaigns and even merchandise, as well as podcasts and videos, talk about 7iber.com, Global Voices online, and Soliya, I was left with very few minutes due to the sudden changes to do my presentation, and had to skip alot of facts and details.Despite that, I heard very good reviews from the organisers about the panel , and they were very pleased with my intervention.

The panel also featured Ahmed, a very interesting blogger from Saudi Arabia, he was interviewed by many international news outlets before, he spoke about the reality of blogging in Saudi Arabia, I found his presentation very interesting, he’s a very progressive and cultured person that I’m glad I met.

Wael Abbas, the third panelist, spoke about blogging in Egypt , and and the problems it is currently facing with the system, we all know that this year was a very bad year for bloggers in Egypt, with detentions, imprisonments, and many other cases of containment. He won the Knight award this year , and delivered speeches in different parts of the world including the U.S, Mexico, and Europe. He was also interviewed by CNN, Aljazeera international, and BBC world, as well as many internationally known news agencies such as the International Herald Tribune.

The representatives of An Nahar and As -Safir newspapers, presented a counter argument saying blogs are unprofessional in the way the present news and facts, they are unreliable , and they can not sustain financially, the only good thing they said about blogs was that they occasionally link to articles from newspapers’ websites which creates traffic for those newspapers!

I met an American woman there named Frances AbouZeid, she’s married to a Lebanese from whom she got her last name, she was the head of Freedom House in Jordan for three years, and she told me about a really interesting project she’s working on jointly with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) and the Jordan National Television (JTV), it is a TV show that will spot the light on social problems in both Lebanon and Jordan, and try to suggest solutions by learning from both countries experience, I personally look forward to watching it when it comes out on TV, which she said would be in around February.

I couldn’t attend the last panel unfortunately, as I had some business to attend to for the company that I work for. In the end it was a very interesting conference , I met amazing people there.Despite the sudden changes, the organisers have done a very good job organising it, It was my pleasure meeting them and getting to know WAN up closely, and I would like to thank them for their kind hospitality and warm welcome, I would also like to thank again everyone who had helped me with materials for my presentation , Elisheva, Amira, Lina, Reem from Soliya, and indeed Esra’a who was behind my participation.

Alexandra, a young impressive journalist from Sweden who covered the conference for Daily News Egypt, an independent newspaper published in English affiliated with the International Herald Tribune, had this to say about it.

Also Ahmad ( the Saudi blogger) shared his views about the conference here.

Bookmark this article

•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     
•     

E-mail this article to a friend

* Required Field

Your Name: *

Your E-Mail: *

Your Remark:

Friend's Name: *

Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.

Friend's E-Mail: *

Separate multiple entries with a comma. Maximum 5 entries.

Image Verification: *

 Loading ...

Close