Clarification on Arab media criticisim

Comments are coming soon, but in the meantime, email us with any feedback — good, bad, or nitpicky — that you might have.  Last week I linked to a story from a local paper in Qatar quoting Ramez Maluf, an expert on media in the Arab world who last year wrote a great FP Memo ...

Comments are coming soon, but in the meantime, email us with any feedback -- good, bad, or nitpicky -- that you might have. 

Comments are coming soon, but in the meantime, email us with any feedback — good, bad, or nitpicky — that you might have. 

Last week I linked to a story from a local paper in Qatar quoting Ramez Maluf, an expert on media in the Arab world who last year wrote a great FP Memo to Karen Hughes. He was speaking at the Doha Forum, and it turns out it somewhat misrepresented what Maluf had to say. He wrote Passport to clarify:

I said Arab media suffered from lack of credibility but that there has been a significant corrective move in the last few years. I also said that much time was spent on Arab television discussing issues that, while significant, were beyond the control of the audiences. Much of the political discussion was "like arguing over whether there is water on Mars." I did not mean that discussions were actually about water on Mars! My point was that there should be more attention to local issues, which could be addressed by the local authorities. These "broken pipes" issues are, for the most part, being avoided.

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