Syria, Tice and Kaminski

Dear Colleagues,

Syria today is a picture of shock, anguish, euphoria, uncertainty — and hope. Among thousands freed from Bashar al-Assad dungeons, Raghid al-Tatari is the pilot imprisoned 43 years ago for refusing Hafez Al-Assad’s orders to bomb the city of Hama.

At the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus — where as many as 30,000 had been tortured and executed — women poured out of overcrowded cells earlier this week. A tiny toddler was liberated. New life. The Assad dynasty of the past half a century is dead.

Debra Tice joined us at Springfield headquarters on Wednesday for an interview on Alhurra Tonight with our Joe Kawly. Debra’s son Austin is the American journalist who was kidnapped while reporting in Syria on August 13, 2012. The Marine Corp vet and Georgetown University alumnus was 31 years old at the time. The U.S. government believes Austin is still alive.

I’m grateful for the work that’s been done across the company on Syria. We’ve covered the fall of a monstrous dictatorship. We’ll report on the difficult weeks and months of transition ahead. Change in Syria, as I’ve heard many of you say, is signal and catalyst for change across our region. Note Iran. Watch Turkey.

Have a look at this powerful 90 second video produced by Fadi Izzaldin and his team. The singer is our former colleague, Mohammed Kamal.

MBN exudes passion and professionalism. Over the past eight months, I’ve come to admire MBN as a company of resilience and fortitude.

We’ll continue to evolve. Today, I thanked Mohammad Sediqi and Mohammed Makki in the finance department for their service at this stage of our development. I wish them both well in their future endeavors.

I’ve met with our finance team today. They work incredibly hard and shoulder vital responsibility. My tip of hat. They deserve acknowledgement and appreciation for all they do for us.

I’ll sit with the team and our new acting CFO Raji Kalra on Monday. Raji will be superb in this role. She has come to us highly recommended.

Our new permanent Chief Financial Officer will arrive in January. Joining MBN is an individual of stature with deep knowledge of our issues — Grant Turner. Grant has served with distinction as both CFO and Chief Risk Officer with USAGM. We’ll be lucky to have him. Grant has exactly the right experience, relationships, and sense for strategy.

I’m grateful for the support we have in transition from Amanda Bennett and her team at USAGM and from our board and distinguished chair Ryan Crocker.

Matt Kaminski on the future of (MBN) journalism

It’s a privilege that Matt Kaminski continues with us as key editorial adviser in 2025. We’ll keep soaking up his rich international experience from Politico, the Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal.

Matt is just back from our region. I’ve been in conversation with him about his impressions— and about MBN opportunities in 2025. Please take a few moments to look at our exchange below:

Jeff Gedmin: You’ve been around this fall, speaking, meeting, writing, advising — in Warsaw and Berlin; Tokyo and Seoul; Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh. Exciting developments you’ve come across? Media trends we need to know about at MBN?

Matt Kaminski: Well, we’re all reading the news and it’s not a quiet time for the world. Not a good time necessarily. But I find myself energized – about what may come in the year ahead, for the world and for our industry. We will have a lot to talk and write about. I think you go into journalism for times like this. In the U.S., you will have a disruptive president who wants to change the U.S. and its relationship with the world. And whether in Asia, or Europe, on in the Middle East the past two weeks, I met people in government and business who are thinking about what Trump means for them and their regions with clarity and realism.

JG:  We’ve often said we want to be platform neutral, but linear television is fading. How to plan then for the future? If you were building from scratch, what does your 21st digital media company look like?

MK: We are lucky enough to live at a time when we have so many different ways to reach our audience. I find that also energizing. As someone who spent most of their professional life as a “newspaper man,” I didn’t always think of it that way. I found the technological changes disorienting. I wanted to hang on to the things that I knew – how to write, edit and run a newspaper. I’m sure a lot of people here think similarly about television. But I realized a couple things. The way you share what you learn as a journalist is not the point. What you share is. Second: In running a digital operation, I saw that there was so much more you can do online. Print is so two-dimensional, not interactive obviously, and most black and white. Television may be in color and more alive, but still limited. Those limitations don’t exist on the newer platforms. I think the key thing is to always think about how your audience wants to consume news. If it’s by smoke signals – I doubt that, but you see the point – fine. And where can you offer them the richest experience. These days, that’s really on the phone.

JG: You often say commodity news is obsolete. What’s the market for investigative journalism, explanatory journalism, and analytical journalism? Thinking of MBN, shall we say: “Others tell you what happened — we explain what it means.” Say a little about a proper mix of programming, news, analysis, and discussion for our Middle East audiences.

MK: During my stay in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, I had a chance to speak to people in various fields about their media diet generally and about MBN in particular. What I heard is strikingly similar to what I’ve heard in Poland or Japan or Mexico this past year. People have news coming out of everywhere. You don’t provide much value by saying what happened that day; that’s everywhere. I used to say the value of commodity news is virtually nil. I now think it has negative value. It means people are spending time on reporting what’s already known rather than trying to produce stuff that’s original.

I was heartened to hear from many people that they know MBN and watch or read it. What do they want? I heard a couple common things. Tell us something we don’t know! About Washington or our own countries. You are more independent than any of our local media. We trust you play news straight. Use that to your advantage more. And give us more talk shows, commentary. Arabs, I heard more than once, love to talk and debate. Alhurra can be a place to have conversations in public that others would never dare allow. I think there are many opportunities for MBN to stand out and build more loyal audiences there.

JG: Your impressions about market niche? And for us as a U.S.-funded media outlet specifically?

MK: Even more specifically, I heard a desire for more insider reporting and analysis on U.S. policies toward the region. Who, what and most importantly why (and what’s next) are the questions they expect an outlet with such a strong Washington presence to answer. Original reporting that takes them behind the scenes I am convinced would resonate among the decision-makers and more broadly in the region. And as I mentioned above, people like to follow personalities. They like shows that have personality. I think there is an opening for more debate and talk formats. More variety news programming. Which is why we all cut back on the straight news we used to do in the past.

JG: Others have deep pockets — Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Sky Arabia. But how are they perceived, at least by insiders you’ve met with?

MK: You don’t need me to tell you that those three outlets in particular are seen as mouthpieces of the three most deep-pocketed governments in the region – Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE. That limits their influence. Al Jazeera caters to more conservative, working class audiences. The other two to the Gulf. MBN is U.S.-government funded, but I think you can show how that reflects American values – a clear commitment to journalistic integrity and independence, for example. If you produce work that stands out, your work will break through. It isn’t a matter of resources. It’s a matter of having great ideas, and delivering on them.

JG: How do we exploit advantages and think asymmetrically? Is the suite of products part of the answer? Podcasts, newsletters?

MK: I think you have to be not just platform agnostic – but platform opportunistic. Use the technology to your advantage. Consumption habits are changing fast. Meet your audiences where they are, not where you would wish them to be. I think any media company that doesn’t take risks, doesn’t experiment with new formats, is doomed. Newsletters remain the most direct way to reach people, kind of like the old newspaper that landed on your front step. Podcasts are taking off. But you might also think about in-person events. Obviously vertical format videos, as I know you are already doing. Ultimately, though, it’s not the format but the substance that determines whether you are successful.

JG: Is there space for satire? I’d like to think the market is saturated with plodding, moralistic commentary.

MK: Let’s ask Jon Stewart. Of course, there is! People want to laugh. Need to. Especially these days.

JG: Israel is important, sensitive, and exceptionally difficult to cover today. For MBN, can you think out loud with us about guidelines and key opportunities?

MK: I always come back to first principles around anything you cover. The job of a reporter is to report – to talk to as many people as possible to tell audiences what’s happening and why. Not what they wish was happening. When you analyze news, you don’t hide inconvenient facts or arguments. The problem with injecting opinion into journalism is that it so BORING. Everyone has opinions. Your privilege – one that must be guarded religiously almost – is to be the eye looking on. You’re not part of the story. American journalists haven’t done a great job in abiding by these principles, but it doesn’t mean you don’t try as hard as hell.

JG: MBN is an Arabic language media group. But English is the lingua franca for elites across the region. Do we have unique opportunities in English?

MK: We live in a bilingual world. The other language is English. Especially for the people who must be part of the core audience – the decision makers in politics and business. And, by the way, especially for young people. I met many people in the UAE and Saudi who told me they live their working lives in English and worry about their Arabic getting weaker.

JG: Finance, technology, AI. Is this a growth area?

MK: For sure. That’s the story in key parts of the region, including in Saudi. Technology is the lever they are trying to use to modernize. The UAE in particular has done an amazing job in developing AI. Given MBN’s U.S. footprint, I think you could have a unique advantage. Put Elon on the air to talk to Arab audiences about the tech future. Who wouldn’t watch that.

JG: What about country priorities? I won’t lead the witness.

MK: I think you have to prioritize coverage. I’ve been impressed by the work you have done in trying to reach specific audiences in Morocco or Egypt, and that’s the beauty of today’s media. You can target niches digitally and perhaps even through linear television like never before. But it’s clear to me where the big stories are. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region for sure. Iraq remains a very important country where Alhurra has built a great reputation for independence and tough-minded reporting. Egypt is so insular these days and doesn’t play a wider regional role commensurate to its size, but still must be a priority. And obviously Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Levant.

JG: What about human rights reporting? What’s a proper focus and touch in today’s Middle East?

MK: You should always do what you can do better than anyone else. Because you can – you don’t have censors browbeating you to avoid this topic. And because it is an important issue for the region.

JG: What about the influence of China, Russia, and Iran? Do you see particular reporting opportunities?

MK: Russia and Iran may be seeing their influence fade, but that’s the great power conflict to watch in the near term. China to my surprise is in the background. It isn’t trying to and isn’t seen as challenging America’s preeminence as a political and cultural force there. This may change of course, but a small example: There are 15,000 Saudi students studying in the U.S. In China, it’s 200.

JG: In other Middle East media outlets, where’s the energy today? What’s bubbling up? Are constraints of government sponsorship limiting development?

MK: I found generally speaking and slight to my surprise that the region is a very dynamic and competitive media scene. You have lots of healthy competition online and on air. People are trying new things – especially outside of politics in areas like business and lifestyle. But because all other outlets in the region have to wear shackles of one kind or another I think MBN has a great opening. Seize it!

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you, dear colleagues. We face challenges — and have immense opportunities. 2025 promises to be a demanding, exciting, and gratifying year. MBN exists for times like these. I can’t wait.

My best, Jeff