The Deadly Precarity of Journalists and Journalism in Gaza
Featuring
Rawan Damen
In Conversation With
Bassam Haddad
Tuesday, 23 April 2024 | 2:00 PM EST, 9:00 pm Palestine
Youtube.com/@Jadaliyya/Streams
International journalists are barred from entering Gaza. Coverage persists solely through Palestinian Journalists, mostly freelancers, despite the grave risk of losing all their media equipment, and/or their lives. ARIJ (Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism) stepped in to replace equipment for 150 journalists, with the support of ordinary people and organizations like RSF and CPJ. Hundreds of journalists are still in need of support. How might you lend a hand? What methods can be employed to sustain ongoing coverage? What audiovisual resource aids are available? Join us for a timely conversation with ARIJ Director, Rawan Damen.
Featuring
Rawan Damen, Filmmaker and media consultant, is the Director General of ARIJ since January 2020. She has 25 years of experience in TV and digital storytelling and stands behind tens of award-winning TV documentaries and investigations in the Arab World. She was also a senior editor at Al Jazeera for 10 years where she commissioned more than 250 documentaries from all over the Arab world. During the five years as ARIJ’s Director General, Rawan has opened the first regional platform for fact-checkers and another first regional Arabic language whistleblowers platform; in addition to ARIJ Artificial Intelligence Strategy. She led the publication of more than 200 investigations with tens of award-winning reports.
In Conversation With
Bassam Haddad is Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the acclaimed series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA's Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book titled Understanding the Syrian Calamity: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).