Building a Shared Vision: Developing and Sustaining Media Education Partnerships in the Middle East

Often the most fleeting contact with international visitors can have a far-reaching and unforeseen impact. Drawing from the authors’ media teaching, research, and practice in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the article addresses the inspiring and enriching cultural impact of media education partnerships between the U.S. and the MENA. The article outlines keys to creating and sustaining successful media, journalism and communication university partnerships, reporting specifically on an international media education collaboration in progress between l’Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l’Information (IPSI), University of Manouba, Tunis and Bowling Green State University. The article also explores how media education partnerships will help institutions in the MENA and the U.S. provide culturally-appropriate education to their students, and the positive impact of each partnerships’ faculty and students being exposed to media, journalism and communication students and practitioners from other cultures and nations. It gives evidence as to how media education partnerships can not only develop professional standards in media, but also build capacity to strengthen democratic practices, build civil society, increase critical thinking and awareness, minimize and manage conflicts, fight negative stereotypes that often emerge as a reaction to governmental and corporate media discourses.

An increased attention to the growth of civil society in the Middle East and North Africa (see, for instance, Amin & Gher, 2000; Bellin, 1995; Borowiec, 1998; Brand, 1998; Darwish, 2003) reveals that civic discourse functions best where there is free access to information and where unhindered discussions allow citizens to examine all sides of civic issues. Because information and communication technology (ICT), media, and journalism are some of the most important sites for civic debate, they are essential partners in any nation’s efforts towards enhancing civil society. As nations in the Middle East and North Africa MENA continue to enhance civil society, it is imperative that their journalists and media and communication professionals have the professional training and dedication to maintain the highest codes of conduct and practice that will make them integral components in the process of building civil society.

At present, however, media critics have shown that the professional activity of journalists in MENA countries is still very vulnerable (Amin, 2002, p. 125). As an expected consequence, MENA education programs in the communication discipline, most notably in news media, journalism, telecommunications and media technologies, have tended to support powerful institutions and individuals, rather than civic discourse and the voices of students as citizens (Amin, 2002; Rugh, 2004; Lowstedt, 2004). For example, investigation on media systems in eighteen nations in the MENA (Rugh, 2004) revealed that radio and television in all these countries, excepting Lebanon, are still subordinated to powerful institutions. There have been several recent international summits acknowledging these concerns. For example, the 2004 conference of the Institute of Professional Journalists in Beirut on “Media Ethics and Journalism in the Arab World: Theory, Practice and Challenges Ahead”, had as one of its main themes the pressures on Arab media and journalists from local governments and other powerful players inside the Arab world. During the Arab International Media Forum held at Doha, in March 2005, workshop discussions underlined that the Arab media’s independence have yet to be established within countries where the media have been strictly controlled. And, perhaps the most important summit thus far this millennium, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (UN WSIS), held in Tunis, November 2005, addressed the immense challenges of the digital divide and other concerns in the MENA. health and social care