Media Training Booms in Middle East

"Newsroom managers throughout the Middle East recognize the need for improved standards among the region's journalists, and training programs are proliferating," writes Gordon Robinson, director of the Middle East Media Project, in the summary to his report "Tasting Western Journalism: Media Training in the Middle East." (PDF) Robinson finds that media training is turning into a "large and growing business" paid for, in part, by U.S. funds, including the Departments of State and Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute. Britain, the European Union and Japan also support media training programs as well as private foundations like John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. "Some, however, question the utility of it all. By some estimates as much as $30 million was spent on media training in the Balkans and, by some accounts, things are worse now than they were before the well-meaning Westerners arrived. Moreover, the training environment in the Middle East now involves many of those same players. So in the Middle East, it needs to be asked when the money is spent, what the trainees really will take back to their newsrooms," Robinson writes.