This is the text of the speech held by the author at the Doha International Conference, organised in Qatar by Reset Dialogues on Civilizations on February 26th 2008.

How badly can media affect relations between the Muslim world and the west? Well, very badly, as we’ve seen over the last 6-7 years. The same is done by politicians or by we who are ordinary citizens, because we all observe things through our own particular lens, our own particular prism: And in the case of the media that lens is reflected around the world, and broadcast to national and international audiences. The bad news is that we are clearly deeply polarized and the fact that we debate the Mohamed cartoon controversy, because someone published those cartoons in Europe, shows how little progress we’re making at some levels. At the same time, we are making much progress at other levels. Many conferences refer to the dialogue of civilizations, and last January there was a huge meeting in Madrid sponsored by the United Nations. Then there are also the million dollars allocated by governments and institutions to improve education and professional training in the media sector.

Equally there is a great deal of awareness of this problem on the part of media. Most of us are involved in a constant dialogue between Western and Arab journalists, addressing where we have been, what we have done, which are the mistakes and how we can avoid them. But the bottom line is that Al Qaeda and the Pentagon both agree that the media is a weapon of war. Journalists and media organizations are seen as weapons of war, and I am not talking about insurgent channels, Jihadist website, or Fox News, but the mainstream news organizations. Ayman Al-Zawahiri said that "More than half of the battle is taking place on the battlefield of the media.” And Donald Rumsfeld declared “A single news story … can be as damaging to our cause … as any other method of military attack.”

As a result of becoming weapons of war, journalists also become targets in this war. Think of the increasing number of deaths of journalists over the last years. Now of course part of that is just because there is a big war there and people die in wars; but journalists have been overtly targeted. Certainly Al-Jazeera is well aware of the degree to which the US government at time targeted their people, and we have all seen the Al-Arabiya correspondents assassinated in Iraq, But beyond that, hundreds of reporters have been targeted overtly by one side of the other, because all sides acknowledge the power of the media and all sides see the media as a weapon used by the enemy. Arab journalists are considered by the Americans and Westerners as tools of insurgency, the bad guys from their perspective, and vice versa.

Part of this is natural. Just as you and I observe the world from a certain perspective, journalists do too. Journalists approach the same story in different ways, because they come from different backgrounds, cultures, and the media and audiences for whom we are reporting are different as well. But there are various degrees of that difference. Look at the iconography of the Iraqi war, and the ways in which the Western and Arab media portray the event. In the west you see the fall of the dictator Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, but in the Arab world you see the other part of the story, an image of colonialism and imperialism. There are thousands of these examples proving that this kind of framing continues in reporting by both sides. This fact was most evident at the beginning of the conflict, and has become less evident in recent times. Partly because journalists from both sides have become increasingly aware of the role they play, and the fact that at some level they have been used.

After 9/11 these feelings of disconnect, this sort of war of the words increased. The fact was that Arabs, Europeans and Americans had very different perspectives of the conflict, and this is particularly true in the US where we have essentially seen no other viewpoint. In the Arab world there are more than 300 satellite channels including CNN, the BBC and Fox News, one can see anything and in Europe to at certain extend one can see many more perspectives, but in the US you see really one perspective, despite a the few hours of the BBC world service. So it is a very constrained viewpoint. This polarization was also exacerbated to a degree at which the Arab media in particular was demonized by the west: “Arabic TV does not do our country justice … They sometimes put out propaganda that just is not right, not fair, and it doesn’t give people the impression of what we’re about” as said president Bush in 2006.

Until recently, there was a real demonization particularly of Al-Jazeera and the Arab media in general, a real lack of understanding that increased the gap. So from the American side there is very little recognition that, yes, Arabs thought very differently because they saw another side of the story. There is no room for the idea that they saw another valid side of the story. Conventional wisdom in the US states that all Arab journalists hate America; that all Arab journalists see the US as the great disrupting force, and that all Arab journalists are biased. Is that true about some Arab journalists? Absolutely. Just as the opposite is true for some Western journalists. We took a survey of 600 Arab journalists across 13 different countries, and the survey found that Arab journalists are not anti-American. They dislike US policy and US conduct in general at some levels, but 62% of them liked American people. At the same time, they think that US policy is a huge threat to their region, but in addition to the lack of political change in the region, some domestic Arab regional issues are as important to Arab journalists as the presence of US forces.

Moreover, they believe that the greatest threat to Arab journalism is government control, and this reference was stated before the “Arab satellite charter” which has obviously been discussed in the press. And that is an example of the degree to which Arab governments remain a threat to Arab journalism. It is obvious in the entire region, one can say that Al-Jazeera is a semi-independent voice, but it works within the guidelines established by Qatari foreign policy for example. Any news organizations in the Arab world works within guidelines. Al-Jazeera has greater independence compared to others; but if we look at Morocco or Yemen, we see journalists in prison, journalists who have been harassed or under siege. In Egypt, where I live, we are seriously under siege. Journalists have taken two steps forward in recent years, at election time, and then three steps back, which affects in a broader sense this dialogue on civilizations.

In recent years, things have greatly improved: At a macro level there is great recognition of the need for dialogue, that this clash of civilizations is not necessary. In the media we involved in a new dialogue between Arab and American journalists. We continue to make the same mistakes over and over. Part of the problem in journalism is that we lack perspectives too often. Hence the voice of the moderation continues to get lost and the media tends to approach stories looking for white guys and black guys, reducing everything to a lower level of analysis. The media have immense power, such as the power to create the current polarization, the media have the power to change, but also the power to foment. It is not a question of ignoring bad news, but rather of the core values of journalism. If at the end of the day one is balanced, fair and responsible, one is a good journalist. The problem, in conclusion, is the role we wish to play as journalists, being balance and fair, or polarized, and thereby allowing ourselves to become weapons of some other war.

Lawrence Pintak is director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at The American University in Cairo, publisher/co-editor of Arab Media & Society and publisher of Mogtamana.org, a portal for Egyptian civil society.