About a week ago, my Jour289I class took a break from our normal discussions to have a guest panel of journalists from the Middle East. There were eleven countries represented from across the whole region. It was definitely an interesting experience learning from journalists in those countries. It was also interesting to see how different each country was in terms of what they can report and how easily people could access good journalism in the various countries.
One of the reporters particularly stood out to most people. She was a reporter from Saudi Arabia. She was telling us about how hard it was to be a female reporter in the country because of the various restrictions places on women in the country. For instance, there is a certain age that women have to be in order to drive or take a taxi in the country. Since she was not old enough to do either of these things, it was difficult for her to make it out to the scenes of various stories to report on them.
Another thing that caught people by surprise was that there was a general agreement among most of the journalists that they can not write stories about their monarch, president, or who ever was in charge. Being an American, this was quite interesting. Since there are always stories about the president (almost every president) doing things incorrectly or how they are bad for the country, it was interesting to hear that they can not even write criticism about their leaders.
Overall, it was a good experience to hear from the journalists from the different Middle East countries. It presented a type of journalism I was not used to and I’m glad I got to hear from the panel.
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