H H Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned underscores the role of ethical media in building a bright future for youth in an exclusive interview with Abdul Latif Al Mahmoud, General Manager of Dar Al Sharq and Editor-in-Chief of Al Sharq
Sheikha Mozah clarified that if we considered responsible Media as a strategic factor in enlightenment and development, we would consider it as an important support for the reinforcement of family and the educational message. We must not let some vulgar satellite TV channels to be a source of diluting the deeply rooted moral and social norms of our society, or hinder our lawful educational and scientific ambitions. How could educational institutes who are seeding scientific enlightenment, let such channels to spread toxic effect on their minds, making our youth look stranger in their own society, remote from their roots and heritage"
She said we are facing a great challenge that requires patience; it is illogical for the recommendations brought by the forum to take effect in one day. From here comes the importance of initiating our campaign titled "towards responsible media space", representing an anticipation mechanism enabling us to have the necessary protection before diseases reach us and become more severe.
Sheikha Mozah was particularly emphatic on the parent's role, supervision and follow up of their wants, part of parent's social and family responsibilities. She said what is more important than this is to strengthen Qatari, Gulf and Arab youth's self-immunity. With this, fruitful cooperation between media and family institutions may be accomplished, she added.
In reply to a question about her call during the forum about the importance of collaboration to fight media illiteracy, and whether this role was restricted to official sectors, or private sectors needed to participate more positively, she said: "I think we cannot make a separation between the roles played by private and government sectors to deal with media illiteracy. It is wrong to continue relying on governments for everything. We must realise the importance and value of civil society roles, and it is a responsibility that must be understood such as the case of education. It is wrong to think that official educational tools are the only one responsible for fighting educational illiteracy. There should be collaboration in efforts, whether it was an official or civil society initiative to accomplish a mission whose value is very clear, which is fighting media illiteracy"
Sheikha Mozah rejected the view that the initiative was a call for enforcing censorship on media. She added that freedom of speech and opinion is respected and praised in Qatar. Nothing could prove this more then the Emir who always insists on this issue in all his speeches. This is one of our country's choices and invariables. We talk here only about vulgar media, and we talk about vulgar commercials, there are some commercials that convey no message at all, strangely enough, some are made as if it is apparently directed to our Islamic societies, while it is totally contradicting our ethics, society, and culture. This is what makes me reemphasize on the responsibility of media apparatuses".
She added: "Today, we invest large sums of money on education, science, and research... in human resources, Today, we spend a lot of money, and the Emir always calls for directing attention towards young people... they are the real investment, the future...if youth lost their belief in ethics and virtues...it's over. We would be building our future on quick sand. We wish that media would help us fulfill our goals; negative approaches will not do us well! Reliance will not do us well! Our efforts need to be unified...she stressed again on the role youth play by saying "My hope is in the youth".
She concluded that responsible media presents good examples to be followed; such good examples are the ones to be emulated and not those freaky images that creep into youth's imagination in our region, through such TV channels that take advantage of the spare time youth have. Filling the vacuum with intruder programmes that do not have anything to do with our cultural fabric, and other exported metamorphosed material laden with ethics opposite to ours, and costumes dissimilar to ours, and manners different from what we have, blind imitation without calculating the grave consequences coming from it.
© The Peninsula 2008
