Al Jazeera’s Khanfar to Deliver MGEITF Address

LONDON, June 6: Wadah
Khanfar, the director general of Al Jazeera Network, will give the Worldview
Address at this year’s MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television
Festival (MGEITF), which takes place from August 22 to 24.

In his Worldview Address,
which offers a global view of the television business, Khanfar will discuss the
international news media and whether the profession is in need of an overhaul.

Khanfar aims to offer a
remedy for how international journalism needs to be revamped, particularly the
need to consider the social, cultural and historical dynamics of societies when
reporting conflict.

Prior to helming the Al
Jazeera Network, Khanfar was a reporter for the Al Jazeera Channel. In
2001/2002, he was a war correspondent in Afghanistan and during the war in Iraq
he reported from the Kurdish-controlled territory in the north. Later, he was
appointed the chief of the Baghdad Bureau and was successful in re-establishing
the bureau in the wake of Iraq's new political landscape.

The Al Jazeera Network
includes the flagship Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera
Sports, Al Jazeera Mubasher and Al Jazeera Documentary, as well as Al
Jazeera.net. During his tenure, Khanfar has seen Al Jazeera Arabic's audience
grow to more than 50 million peak viewers, and also oversaw the launch of Al
Jazeera English, which now reaches 110-plus million households globally.

—By Irene Lew