Recently by Emma Heald

16-17 February 2012, Room IV, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France

The conference "The Media World after WikiLeaks and News of the World" aims to gather leading media representatives, professional and "citizen" journalists and media law experts to exchange views on these issues and to discuss good practices in traditional professional journalism and citizen journalism in the digital era.

With a stunning 2 billion persons estimated to be using the Internet and producing 156 million public blogs in 2011, there has been a surge of social networks, user-generated content and micro-blogging that has enabled all Internet users to become public communicators. Along with the spread of the Internet, WikiLeaks' release of a massive number of classified government documents and its initial collaboration with traditional news media has modified the media landscape and raised crucial questions for journalism.

"Thank God we've moved away from the time when you think you can just put television online," said David Hayward, head of the journalism programme at the BBC College of Journalism, opening a session on online video at news:rewired in London on Friday.

John Domokos, video producer at the Guardian, elaborated on this sentiment, explaining that a newspaper can't hope to beat TV for the polished version of a story, thoroughly edited with a highly-structured narrative, so it is better to focus on what it can do that is different and complementary. He often adopts a "microcosm" approach, aiming to create a three or four minute film that gives viewers a window onto a specific world.  

"Be strategic, be different, and strive for meaningful interactions," advised Liz Heron, social media editor at The New York Times, speaking about social media at news:rewired in London on Friday.

The social media world is changing fast and 2011 brought social media into the mainstream, Heron stressed. "In early 2010 we in the social media team were evangelisers, by 2011 we were highly in demand," she said.  The team has set up social media trainings, put together guidelines and experimented as much as possible with the paper's flagship accounts, she added.

"It's impossible to have editorial freedom without financial independence," said Aboubakr Jamai, founder and editor of Moroccan weekly magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire, opening the business-focused session of the 5th Arab Free Press Forum, which also included Jacek Utko of Bonnier Business Press.

Many obstacles to successful news publication in the Arab World are receding, said Mohammed Alayyan, founder and publisher of Al-Ghad Daily, the first independent paper in Jordan, and the Alwasweet Weekly Newspaper.

The future of the newspaper is in magazines, believes Jacek Utko, design director for Bonnier Business Press, which publishes newspapers in eight Central European countries. This is a trend that news organisations should embrace rather than fight, he added, speaking at the 5th Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis.

Print is still a highly relevant medium, Utko said, and publishers are increasingly realizing this as they have been disappointed by tablets as audience- and revenue-generators.

However, the print model at many news organisations - publishing website content the following day and charging for it - does not make sense, Utko claims. It is necessary to offer more than that if you want people to willingly pay for the product.

Press freedom and freedom of expression remain under serious threat in the Middle East, despite the democracy revolutions and reforms that are sweeping the region, a panel of experts said Tuesday at the Arab Free Press Forum in Tunisia.

"The problem today is that you might not be afraid of the secret police, but you might fear the moral police," said Ghias al-Jundi, the Syrian Director of the PEN International Writers in Prison Committee and a member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange's (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group.

While the dramatic democratic upheavals "have made steps in overcoming power and overcoming the kingdom of fear," the Islamist groups who were long barred from politics and are now emerging do not have a tradition of political interaction with other groups.

How can the media regain public trust as a credible source of news, participants contemplated at the 5th Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis. After years of propaganda, it is difficult for newly-free publications  in the Arab World to establish themselves as trustworthy sources of news, particularly when facing competition from blogs and social media.

Hussam Eddin Muhammed, columnist for Palestinian-owned, London-based paper Al-Quds al-Arabi, said that respecting the reader and the viewer is very important. There are both journalists who risk their lives to bring accurate news to the public, and then there are media that just offer incorrect news.  

by Larry Kilman

With repression of Arab media lifted in some countries following the 'Arab Spring' revolutions and reforms, what needs to be done to develop a professional independent press in the region?

That was the question posed during a panel discussion Monday at the Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis, and the answer is - quite a lot of things.

Of course there is journalism training, but the needs go far beyond reporting. The challenge is how to turn media into commercial ventures.

"Journalists often don't have proper management experience or marketing experience," said Hafez al-Bukhari, President of the Yemen Polling Centre.

Has the media played a significant role in inciting the public to protest in the Arab World? Participants in the first session of the 2012 Arab Free Press Forum in Tunis discussed whether the media is a mirror that reflects peoples ideas, as Al Jazeera English senior political analyst Marwan Bishara suggested, or whether it works more actively.

Raghida Dergham, senior diplomatic correspondent for Al Hayat, although emphasizing that as she lives in New York she doesn't have a complete picture of media on the ground, said that she believes some satellite channels did not distinguish between covering the events and inciting people to engage in revolution. 

The 5th Arab Free Press Forum opened Monday in Tunisia with a celebration of the gains that have been made in Middle East press freedom, but with a reminder that much more needs to be done.

"If Tunisia is the country in the region that has most advanced in the construction of democracy, other countries in the region are still suffering under the yoke of authoritarianism," said Moroccan journalist Aboubakr Jamai, opening the conference on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). "Reporters thus face different situations. Some have won -- like their fellow citizens -- their freedom of speech, while others continue to risk their freedom and even their lives."

"Some are more advanced than others in constructing democratic society, but if the level of democritization differ, there is little doubt about the dynamics that have begun in our societies," said Mr Jamai, laureate of WAN-IFRA's Gebran Tueni Award. "There is a sense of history, one that leads to respect for liberty and dignity."