MDC has launched, last Wednesday, the Palestinian Media National Strategy during a ceremony with the participation of partners of the strategy.

In his speech, Dr Khalil Hindi President of BirZeit University welcomed the audience and appreciated the cooperation between the Council of Ministers, the Government Media Center and the Journalists Syndicate as well as the universities and local partner organizations in this national project.

Dr. Hinidi added that what is being sought to invest in this partnership in order to create a framework for all the efforts put forth to advance the Palestinian media. This framework shall diminish waste of money and resources in scattered, contradicting of replicated efforts.

Dr. Hindi pointed out the endeavor to root the ultimate goal; build, maintain and keep sustainability of media capacities, and that will be done through raise journalists' and citizens' awareness of their rights and duties in a society characterized by freedom, equality and networking with local, regional and international partners.

Also, the objective was set to promote Palestinian media level through participation in discussions on media policies and provide advocacy to state bodies and civil society organizations. For her part, Director of BZU Media Development Center Mrs. Nibal Thawabteh welcomed project partners and attendees, adding that inspiration for the national media strategy sprung from the urgent need to organize and manage national media development efforts, set qualifying criteria and frameworks for journalists, as well as agree upon an advocacy plan and normative, moral and legal framework that would contribute to freedom, novelty and professionalism of the national media.

Head of Government Media Center Dr. Ghassan el-Khatib said that project concept meets needs of various parties who have nothing to do with media, whether journalists, the public, NGOs and state bodies. Dr. el-Khatib reiterated that the government will facilitate action of the national workforce on implementation of strategy in order to promote media performance, provided that graduating exceptional journalists would be one of the project outcomes. ''We hope that this workforce would handle 'legislation' issue according to initial draft, as we are desperate to review all legislations pertaining to media. We also need a high council for media, together with continue activation and widening of journalists union, and consider the main gap in the Palestinian media for not being the primary source of information for the Palestinian people, where they mostly rely on foreign media. We must do better to develop an effective public opinion that protects freedom of the press and freedom to express opinion, provide and develop a more tolerant culture that could deal with multitude of opinions and officials' criticism'', Dr. el-Khatib said.

Represented by its head Dr. Abdul Nasser Najjar, journalists syndicate welcomed the strategy, emphasizing that the syndicate will adopt it as it believes it will be the first practical step towards getting out of the media impasse the syndicate witnesses, since the phase we undergo is not clear yet, and whether the Palestinian people will opt for resistance or not, having the Independent State project uncompleted. "The most important step to make this plan happen is drafting this strategy so that it could develop and improve local media and achieve the public media, as the people is main motivation for that", Dr. Najjar added.

Press and media professor at BZU Mr. Abdul Rahim Abdullah stressed in his speech that the strategy will set through discussion and academic/research output a normative framework that would be agreed upon nationwide to come up with the desired Palestinian media, and that it will also set a systematic framework for action to put the normative framework into action, and within a three-year plan that is binding to all parties (the government, local and international stakeholders) in terms of financing, supervision and implementation.

In his interposition, editor-in-chief of Palestine News Agency (WAFA) Mr. Ali Hussein suggested that a specialized media school must be established, adding that we are going through media industry stage; and therefore we need certain criteria to govern this industry, taking into account the academic outputs that are not professionally qualified.

On behalf of Palestine Broadcast Corporation (PBC), head of radio programs department Mr. Emad el-Asfar said that the beneficiary to likely take advantage of this effort the most will necessarily be the radio, as it is Palestine's biggest media branch, showing PBC readiness to cooperate in order to make this strategy succeed. Additionally, the media strategy release event saw many interpositions that asserted the need cooperation of all Palestinian media foundations for the success of the strategy.

From right: Naser Abu Baker (Palestinian Journalist Syndicate), Aref Hijjawi (journalist and media expert), Nahed Aby Teimah (journalist and lecturer at Al-Quds University), Abdelrahim Abdallah (Media Department at Birzeit University) and Toby Mendel were among the speakers of the World Press Freedom Day in Palestine

Yesterday, on May 2 2012, UNESCO, Canal France International (CFI), the Media Development Center (MDC) and the Media Department organized a celebratory seminar to mark World Press Freedom Day centred on the theme ’Legal and Ethical Framework for Journalism in Palestine: Challenges in a New Media Environment’.

More than 70 people took part in the event at Birzeit University in the West Bank, which was arranged with assistance from key media stakeholders in Palestine. The event hosted a list of both local and international influential and inspiring speakers who pointed to the major issues concerning the status of press freedom in Palestine.

Dr. Munir Qazzaz, Vice-President for Community Outreach at Birzeit University and Head of UNESCO’s Office in Ramallah, Derek Elias opened the event and thanked the MDC and CFI for their efforts in making the event possible.

Elias emphasized UNESCO’s activities for supporting free press and addressed especially the importance of new media in an area like Palestine – especially in Gaza where the siege limits access for journalists.

“Internet, social media, and blogs are the only way for people to break isolation,” said Elias.

Moderator of the event, Abdelrahim Abdallah from the Media Department at Birzeit University, compared Palestinian media to a ballet dancer performing on a slippery ground as journalists try to adapt to the sensitive surroundings they work in and the societal and political walls put up around them by both Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

Adding to this Nahed Abu Teimeh, Journalist and Lecturer at Al-Quds University, spoke of the difficulties and oppression of female journalists in Palestine. And Kholod Massalha from I’lam Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel described incidents of censorship and discrimination of Palestinian journalists working in Israel such as state monitoring, censorship and difficulties for Palestinian journalists in attaining an Israeli GPO press card.

To address specifically the legal framework for Palestinian journalists, key speaker, Toby Mendell - Executive Director of the Canada-based Centre for Law and Democracy – pointed to the lack of a fully proper environment for traditional media in Palestine including a media law that guarantees freedom of opinion and expression as stated in Article 19 in the Declaration of Human Rights.

Walid Shurafa, Head of the Media Department at Birzeit University, shared this view saying:

“There is a flirtatious relationship between media and authorities where the private media organizations flirt with the PA, which has the right to take away its jurisdiction. This causes selective criticism which serves other agendas than freedom of speech.”

Other speakers of the day included Dr. Ghassan Al-Khatib, Director of the Government Media Center, Naser Abu Baker from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Aref Hijjawi, Journalist and Media Expert, Zolfa Shahror, Correspondent at WAFA Agency and Head of the Syndicate of WAFA Workers and Emad Al-Asfar, Programs Director at Palestine TV.

As journalists and media professionals from Gaza were not able to take part in the event, a similar event is scheduled in Gaza City on May 10.

The great turnout and the enthusiastic and critical debates among participants made the event a great success, which the MDC hopes to repeat next year.

World Press Freedom Day, commemorated every 3rd of May, was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993, following a recommendation adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference in 1991. This year, UNESCO’s global WPFD event was held in Tunis, and focused on “New Voices: Media Freedom Helping to Transform Societies.”

On April 25^th 2012, the MDC welcomed a French delegation from Toulouse Municipality, led by Mrs. Vincentella de Comarmond, Deputy Mayor in charge of Culture, and comprising Mr. Pierre Lacaze, Municipality Counsellor in charge of cultural heritage, Mrs. Gisèle Teulières, Director of International Affairs Office of the Municipality, Mrs. Inas de Brion, Project Officer at the International Affairs Office of the Municipality, Mrs. Julie Giraud, Project Officer at the Cultural Development Office of the Municipality, Mr. Jean-Louis Dufour, Director of the School for Audiovisual Studies (ESAV) in the University of Toulouse II, and Mr. David Mozziconacci, Director of Studies at the Fine Arts School of Toulouse.

This visit was organized in the framework of the cooperation between both municipalities of Toulouse and Ramallah, with the aim to develop further its “cultural engineering component, as it is a key partnership for Toulouse” according to the Deputy Mayor of Toulouse.

Dr. Munir Qazzaz, Vice-President for Community Outreach of Birzeit University, introduced the University’s Community Outreach activities and warmly praised the delegation’s initiative. As the very first meeting with Birzeit University, the delegation from Toulouse Municipality emphasized its strong willingness to take concrete steps in establishing common projects in the field of Audiovisual, Cinema and Culture together with the MDC and to a larger extent with Birzeit University.

The MDC is happy to announce that Al-Hal will in 2012 get an online ’sister’. With the support of Canal France International (CFI), the MDC will launch a new project focusing on online multimedia journalism called 'Al-Hal 2.0'.

The MDC’s Al-Hal newspaper has throughout the past 8 years acquired a reputation of being a high quality paper tackling sensitive social and political issues in its monthly issues. Based on the same dedication to ensure and promote high professional standards for investigative journalism in Palestine, the new Al-Hal website will be a multimedia platform that will additionally serve as a model, especially for dedicated media professionals, on how to produce and edit online news in innovative ways.

”In the light of the Arab uprisings throughout the past year it has become even more important for journalists to be familiar with how to professionally use the large amount of resources available on the net. The online Al-Hal will – just like the newspaper – serve as a source of inspiration for other mainstream Palestinian media news agencies to follow,” says MDC’s Director, Nibal Thawebteh.

In 2012 a dozen of Palestinian journalists from the West Bank will form the first team to kick-off the Al-Hal website's multimedia content, after benefiting from tailor-made technical and theoretical trainings provided by Arabic-speaking media experts from French media outlets selected by CFI.