CAIRO: The United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held two meetings in December with Arab experts of journalism in Morocco and Bahrain in an effort to help push the field forward in the Arabic speaking world. The UN culture body cited a number of difficulties, such as numerous obstacles and challenges to press freedom and many Arab reporters unwillingness to change. The goal of the meeting, UNESCO said in a press statement, was to “help developing countries and emerging democracies find a voice through their media.” In Rabat, members of the media from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania, met to discuss a new proposed curricula for training journalists in order to push forward the profession, a member of the delegation and UNESCO consultant, said. “Invariably, the issue of multi-media, online journalism, and social media caused consternation among the older participants, who saw it as a threat to their very existence or to their countries' stability and security,” wrote Palestine Note, who attended the meeting. According to the blogger, journalists at the meeting initially resisted the appellation “journalism” and pointed to online disinformation, “but most were eventually persuaded that they ignored today's journalistic reality at their own peril.” Women in media was a major point of discussion at the meetings, including looking into the means of increasing women's participation in key media positions through new education foundations. “Participants debated whether gender should be added to the curriculum — already a rich mix of liberal arts, specialized, and hands-on courses — to arm future journalists with the skills and tools needed in a 21st Century globalized and converged media environment,” the blogger added. UNESCO further encouraged the North African academics to integrate human rights content into various educational modules and give weight to general knowledge courses. But the UN body doesn't plan to impose the program on those Francophone countries that for decades have followed rather rigid theory-laden and government-imposed curricula, a number of delegates said following the meetings. Rather, it has sought to get the academics' feedback to the curricula, which are meant to be adapted to different regions' requirements worldwide. In Algeria, journalism is taught in Arabic. In Morocco, students can choose to follow courses in Arabic or French. Tunisia and Mauritania also teach in French and Arabic. Tunisian programs are becoming more open to English but Mauritania lacks formal journalism curricula or journalism schools in the traditional sense, sources report. This is part of the problem facing North Africa. “Journalists from the four countries often miss out on a lot of news produced in English or other languages, given their limited linguistic skills,” UNESCO said. In Manama, the College of Arts' dean at the University of Bahrain described the experts meeting as an important step towards quality journalism education, thereby renewing a commitment by Gulf Cooperation Council countries to adapt fully, or partially, to UNESCO's model curricula. Gulf countries' university journalism programs have traditionally been taught in Arabic. But some universities have begun to adopt Anglo-Saxon models, namely the American system, with the requisite need to follow courses in English. American-type institutions, or branches of U.S. colleges, have also made inroads by opening branches in the Gulf region, but they seem to attract expatriates for the most part. The Rabat and Manama gatherings involved journalism educators, trainers and practitioners, including this writer who had worked on producing “Model Curricula for Journalism Education.” The proposed curricula are a launching pad for countries that initially sought UNESCO's help to upgrade their academic programs, and can be tailored to different systems' needs. UNESCO first convened a consultative meeting in Paris in 2005 grouping experts carefully selected from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America, to write the syllabi for core courses. That led to a second meeting at the organization's headquarters. The initial group collaborated with 20 international journalism educators with extensive experience in developing countries and emerging democracies. Their collective efforts, as well as final work by a core of four experts who hammered out the text, culminated in the road map that was launched at the first World Journalism Education Congress in 2007 in Singapore. **information and content was used from Palestine Note. BM
