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Showing posts from July, 2014

South to South and North and back

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Thinking South-to-South was the next big topic of the first day at the GEN Summit in Barcelona and I felt sorry that half the audience had left the room by the end of the sessions. “How much dialogue is there between what we call the political South,” wondered Sami Zeidan, from Al Jazeera, having recently been to South America. Representatives with experience in developing countries had a lot to say. Wadah Khanfar at the GEN Summit 14 “The world was summarized and centralized in the West. It was our cultural narrative,” stated Wadah Khanfar, President of Al Sharq Forum and former Director General of the Al Jazeera Network. Years ago, when newsrooms looked at a model to follow, “for us in the East, it was London; for others it was the United States or France. Now it isn’t the case,” he sentenced. He also advocated for journalism in depth.  “We need our newsrooms to become think tanks, not technology laboratories,” he added. Joyce Barnathan, President of the  International Ce