In October 2005, more than 500 media development professionals from dozens of countries gathered in Amman, Jordan for the first summit of the Global Forum for Media Development, a new alliance of organizations involved in media training activities around the world.  The location of the gathering was significant: Jordan’s King …

Since the fall of 2005, the Egyptian press has speculated giddily about the fate of the state-owned broadcasting service, which is laden with debt, haunted by corruption scandals and grappling with over-employment and other inefficiencies. Since the 1990s, there media specialists, government officials and foreign aid agencies have discussed how …

Anyone who visits Lebanon will be struck by the excessive Lebanese use of space: Urbanisation literally is filling the space perpendicularly, up into the skies and the mountain ranges, and horizontally, as sprawling resorts or “developments” eat up huge chunks of the coast in Beirut and Doura, where two dumps …

(This article is based on a presentation at the Foreign Policy Research Institute on 19 April 2005). News in the Arab World Before the Age of Satellite TV Little more than a decade ago there was no such thing as television journalism in the Arab world. State-owned national television channels …

In the Middle East, as elsewhere, politics sometimes receives an unexpected jolt that produces unanticipated consequences. This has happened during the past decade as information and communication technologies have become more pervasive and influential. This process is accelerating. A key factor in this expansion of reach and power is the …

The famous Arab news network Al Jazeera has been considered one of the most important de facto “Arab political parties.” Since most Arab countries have not yet established functioning democracies, relevant institutions, such as political parties and a parliamentarian opposition, are still rudimentary. To many observers, Arab satellite television seems to have …

(Editor’s Note: This article is one of two personal essays in this issue of TBS, one written by Vivian Salama, a reporter covering the Mubarak campaign, and another written by Usama Najeeb, a staffer working on the media team for that same campaign. Najeeb, a former Adham Center graduate student …

(Editor’s Note: This article is one of two personal essays in this issue of TBS, one written by Vivian Salama, a reporter covering the Mubarak campaign, and another written by Usama Najeeb, a staffer working on the media team for that same campaign. Najeeb, a former Adham Center graduate student …

Egypt’s first-ever presidential campaign opened dramatically for the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) with a speech by the president at the recently built Al Azhar Park. Designed and laid out by the Aga Khan foundation, the park perches majestically on the edge of the city on a former landfill, overlooking …

At an August press conference early on in Egypt’s landmark race for the presidency, Mohammad Kamal, the mastermind behind the smoothly crafted reelection campaign of President Hosni Mubarak, stood before a skeptical international press corps. He had not come to sell the world on his candidate. There was no need …