POLIS director Charlie Beckett introduced Fouda as a former BBC correspondent. Apparently the BBC had recruited and trained many leading Arab specialists who were all fortituously snapped by a foresightful Qatari government after the BBC Arabic channel was made defunct.

The first phase of Aljazeera's history was utter shock from Arab governments and peoples. The former felt threatened. They protested diplomatically by withdrawing their ambassadors from Doha while sending other senior figures to ask the Emir to shut down Aljazeera - but the Qatari government did not give in to the pressure. Arab citizens, on the other hand, were overjoyed. In the Arab world, radio and television are all state-owned and strictly policed because almost 50% of Arabs are illiterate, thus making them the medium of choice for the masses while intellectuals can indulge themselves with a tad more leeway in the print media. He commented that when he used to teach media studies, he would task his students to look out for what was not reported as this often gave a better picture of programme makers and editorial policy. Aljazeera pulled no punches in showing unflattering news or footage of Arab governments to their own people and even discussed many previously taboo subjects such as explicit descriptions of what Islamic love-making is like. During the Q&A later, Fouda hastened to correct mistaken impressions - he categorically denied that Aljazeera had ever shown footage of beheadings as this went against universal standards of taste and decency. Neither did it show the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad.

The second phase was marked by persecution with the shutting down of Aljazeera offices around the Arab world and the arrest of its employees as well as a campaign of slander and misinformation particularly in the Egyptian and Saudi mass media. Both of these even became news items on Aljazeera's own news programs to show audiences how frightened the establishment was and to refute the allegations made against them.

The third phase was one of superficial acceptance and increased competition. Although satelite signals could be jammed, it was "so expensive that even the Saudi government couldn't afford it." In Fouda's view, this was the critical point when governments got the message that "it's different now." The response was to step down the harrassment of Aljazeera and the overnight launch of multiple lookalike state-owned channels, flooding the airwaves with variety, talk/chat, soap shows. Although this could be seen as a ploy by these governments to crowd out Aljazeera and its content, Fouda believes that this was a significant victory as governments were forced to open up media space for more voices to emerge. Fouda emphasized that he was pleased by the "competition" and that many reporters on the other networks were close personal friends as well as new young rising stars. The acid test would probably be if Aljazeera closed down today, would Alarabiyah and others closed down tomorrow? Probably not as Arab audiences have become accustomed to having such media; Fouda drew a parallel between death and freedom to illustrate this - once you visit it, you cannot go back.

The fourth and current phase was probably the most difficult as Aljazeera could no longer afford to make mistakes that might have been excused as being a pioneer young news channel. It had to move from the "screaming for the sake of screaming" (which Fouda sees as a necessary and inevitable state after many years of repression) to fostering the acceptance of being comfortable to speak your mind and to do so in a measured way. By bringing more facts to its viewers, Fouda saw Aljazeera as an avenue for political and social education in the Arab world. However he seemed to retreat somewhat from this during the Q&A when many questions seemed to have sky high expectations of Aljazeera's potential role in promoting liberalism and democracy in the Middle East.

Fouda urged the audience to judge Aljazeera not by its content but of what it has forced other government-controlled Arab media organizations to include on their screens. He also recounted how a new French satellite news network listed in its mission statement that it sought to rival CNN, BBC and Aljazeera. Another possible metric, showing the value of how Aljazeera reports on what no one else reports and goes to places where no one else is present, is how many intelligence agencies subscribe to their programming for transcription, translation and inputting into their databases while aiming to counter them through information management programs such as the US State Department's Counter Misinformation Team or even flooding open sources with a huge amount of redundant data.

There are times when comparisons between Aljazeera and CNA are terribly unfair. For instance, it broadcasts to a linguistically unified audience. Arabic is used in most of the Middle East except in the Muslim majorities states at the edges like Iran (Farsi), Pakistan (Urdu) or Turkey which will be cartered to by the forthcoming English language Aljazeera International. CNA broadcasts in English, limiting its mass impact. This is compounded by how there is no clear dominant language in East Asia. In Southeast Asia, it's broken up in Bahasa, Thai and Tagalog while in Northeast Asia we have Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

However on other more comparable aspects, CNA still loses out. Content-wise, CNA does not seem to have achieved Aljazeera's ability to force Western news networks to re-use its original footage - even if Aljazeera's footage is re-worked and re-packaged, this creates a widespread awareness of Aljazeera in the West - evidenced by an anecdote from Fouda when he conversed with a little old lady in an airport lounge in Phoenix, Arizona over the Thanksgiving weekend and how he was recognized on the street as "that Aljazeera guy" in numerous other places in the US. As a result, CNA does not have the kind of agenda setting power nor do neighbouring governments take note or react to its news coverage.

Aljazeera has become an extremely important source of Qatar's soft power, "probably more important than its Ministry of Foreign Affairs!" boasted Mr Fouda. Like the UAE and Dubai, Qatar is a micro-state whose oil and gas reserves are rapidly running out. It is currently investing its oil wealth to develop new foundations for its economy and Aljazeera can be a useful anchor to develop a strong media sector while the massive US base in its territory gives the tiny Emirate hard physical security. CNA does not provide quite the same multiplier to Singapore's economic development, soft power or foreign policy options.

Despite Fouda's downplaying of the importance of content, it was Aljazeera's relatively free and critical content that entrenched itself into the consciousness of the Arab street. Fouda had no regrets of Aljazeera's Faustian bargain not to criticize the Qatari government ("Nothing much happens there anyway!") in exchange for Qatari largesse to subsidise the network ("Mr Murdoch makes money from his sports and pornography channels, News channels are for prestige.") and the leeway to make the hardhitting programmes that its trained staff were raring to make. There's no completely free press anywhere in the world, declared Fouda. But IMHO it was Aljazeera's relatively free, extensive, daring and critical coverage that made it into the important news network that it is today. And despite Fouda's happy acquiscience to the (albeit limited) strictures of the Qatari monarchy, he still strongly displayed his BBC-training and assumptions - that a true professional journalist should be able to report freely and fairly without deferring overly to any government whether liberal democratic or authoritarian.

Addendum: Beckett has written a quick blog entry on the lecture and the proceedings were recorded for a possible podcast and transcript though neither has appeared at the time of this post.