Nigel Parson

Managing Director Al Jazeera International

EAMF is a wonderful opportunity to bring East and West together. It provides a great forum for lively debate, and the full and frank exchange of views from all sides – the chance for a meeting of minds, or at least to hear and try to understand different viewpoints. This year, the forum has a particular resonance, given recent events in the region. It’s important that we don’t draw the wrong conclusions from these events. Now more than ever we should be embracing freedom of speech, and working towards peaceful, fair and open societies everywhere, which can develop and evolve in their own way, at their own pace, without outside interference.

This will be my fourth time attending the forum. It is one of my favourite media conference events, simply because you are always guaranteed alternative viewpoints. Many other media events tend to be dominated by Western companies, with a distinctly Western perspective on world events. Here I get to hear another side, its like putting on a different pair of spectacles, and it is fascinating for that. This year it is also particularly pertinent for me to be speaking at the forum, with the forthcoming launch of Al Jazeera International, the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel, planned for the end of 2005 or early 2006. We are proud to take on the heritage of Al Jazeera’s Arab language channel, which blazed a trail in the name of media freedom in the Arab-speaking world, and which spawned a plethora of imitators to give the Middle East the kind of open debate enjoyed in the region today.

The whole concept of this forum – the bringing together of East and West in an atmosphere of free and open discussion -- is in line with Al Jazeera International’s strategy and editorial policy, to provide the English speaking world with all sides of the story from all parts of the globe.

I look forward to debating ‘The Arab Media’ with my fellow panellists, and to attending the forum’s other sessions which I am sure will prove to be a stimulating and enlightening experience for us all.