Media; rightly blamed but finally help democracy prevalence

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen!

Thanks a lot for the chance given to me in this worth full conference.

In this article, I am going to introduce two important ideas: the first one is “the relation between the real roles of media with the prevalence of democracy”, and the second is “the unbalanced criticism and blames of the Moslem societies against the national and international media with the amount of their media initiatives.”

Naturally, in this short article, I am not going to any detailed analysis of these two points, since each of them needs enough time to be discussed in details. In this chance I just try to introduce my points as clear as possible in order for the thinkers and researchers to follow up the issues more deep and prefect.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen!

Now, I begin my discussion by introducing the first Idea. I will try to make two integrated points in this regard:

First: the media in general and the western media in particular, were blamed, criticized and attacked by thinkers and leaders in different developing countries and especially by Moslem nations. No doubt, these dalliances and criticisms should not be judge as baseless and non reasonable, although, in no way, they were securing from the bad effects of pessimistic approaches. 

In the last five decades, for instance, western media functioned as the most destructive tools for the entities, beliefs and national sovereignty of third world nations and Moslem nations in particular. Fortunately there are hundreds of search full articles and materials published to support this point of view using different important cases. The most recent one is the contempt, insolence and despising cartoons published in different western media against the Prophet of Islam, Mohammad(s) and has been widely criticized not only by Moslem nations but fortunately by many thinkers in different corners of our world.

Second: The main point I try to make is that: in recent decades, media and particularly western media, were the goal of reasonable criticisms and attacks, but in the meantime, an important reality has been continuously ignored: no body talks about the role, function and effect of the media in pushing forward different nation’s freedom seeking movements. For instance, no research has been done on the positive contributions and roles of national and international media in the victory of Islamic revolution in Iran. I regard this, in its turn, an unjust and ingratitude approach we followed in our evaluation of the role of media.

 Now lets me add up my first theme: although National and international media, when they used as the tool of colonization and unfair exploitation were justly blamed for their misdoings against third world and Moslem nations, but finally it is the media that helped democratic movements to end in success and this face of the coin could not be ignored.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen!

Now, I try to make my second Idea. Here again, I have two points to be introduced.

First: In the last fifteen years the huge developments in the field of communication and information technology, has changed many essential parameters of the world of media. The most important and fundamental parameter is the very cheap, simple, straightforward facilities of direct bidirectional and multilateral communication among individuals, in different corners of the world, no matter where they are.

This development is so important that one can predict with a great hope that, the mentioned parameter finally materializes the will of nations and will help them to gain control over their own fate.

Second: the share of Moslem nations in deploring the media current state of affairs is in no way in a good and just balance to their weak participation in day to day software and hardware initiatives of the field of Information technology. Moslem nations were used to wait, until a new initiative is materialized and then used by the initiators according to their own policies and interests and even against Islamic values. One would say that our very job is then to sit and deplore the situation and blame others who naturally care about their own interests.   

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen!

Let me ask a question: just in the last decade, we observed a huge amount of media and multimedia initiatives in the field of communication. Now do you see any of them to be the result of the mind of Moslem societies?! As one of the last cases in this regard, consider the initiative of web logs as a personal, private, and free of charge media. The role of Moslem administrations hardly goes beyond of attempting to deprive their citizens of accessing this new facility as they did the same in the previous instances. 

 Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen!

Moslem societies, thinkers and faithful scientists, must immediately manage an organized attempt to increase the initiative share and contribution of Moslem nations in the world of media and communication. Fortunately, some isolated and mimic moves, such as the establishment of professional TV news networks, had been done in recent years with some good consequences. But this is just the first step.  We Moslems must introduce new initiatives and participations to the world of communication and media. It is in this way that we, too, would be able to be pioneers of using our native initiatives to defend our Islamic values and national interests.

Thank You!