Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid to speak at World Editors Forum

22 Sep 2011

Hoda Abdel-Hamid, award-winning Al Jazeera correspondent who has reported from the Middle East, Europe and North Africa, has joined the programme of the upcoming World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum, to be held in Vienna, Austria, 12-15 October 2011, where she will be speaking in a special joint session devoted to news coverage of the Arab Spring revolutions.

With the revolutions dominating the news agenda internationally, the Middle East developments have a central place at the Congress and Editors Forum, where the press, publishers, chief editors, CEOs, managing directors and other senior newspaper executives of the world's are expected to attend.

In addition to Abdel-Hamid, who is currently covering the revolution in Libya, the "how to tell the truth during a revolution" session will feature, Philippe Massonnet, global news director for Agence France-Presse; Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer with the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information; and Magda Abu-Fadil, director of the Journalism Training Programme at the American University in Beirut, who will chair the session.

Issues to be examined

The joint Congress and Forum session will examine:

How can news organisations report effectively and truthfully during a revolution and about the new Arab awakening?
Where is the ethical limit for coverage? How much blood should be shown?
Are we journalists or activists?
How can a new organisation ensure accuracy when using materials from social media and citizen journalists?
How can publishers create an environment that ensures good reporting standards and what kind of role should the publisher play?
Can a publisher be neutral in a revolution? How should they deal with old alliances?
How can journalists and publishers protect their sources?

The Congress and Forum will also present "Frontline stories from the Arab Spring", a breakfast meeting featuring testimony from local editors, journalists and publishers from the region who will be attending the events.

There is still time to register for the Vienna 2011 events, organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and hosted by the Austrian Newspaper Association, VOZ.

The Editors Forum and Congress are being held this year in conjunction with IFRA Expo, a global trade exhibition for the news publishing and media industry. Full details of all the events can be found at www.worldnewspaperweek.org.