The 8th annual Arab Media Forum (AMF) opened today with an insightful debate on the role of the business media prior to the onset of the current global economic crisis.

The one-hour session also deliberated on reasons why the media may have been too engrossed in the happenings of the corporate world to see the oncoming financial meltdown.

Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the two-day Arab Media Forum is being held at the Atlantis Palm Hotel in Dubai. It has brought together over 1,000 eminent media personalities, including 57 speakers, 11 moderators, and 300 foreign participants from abroad and 600 from the UAE.

Moderated by Todd Benjamin, Former Financial Presenter, CNN, the session drew the participation of Mohammed Ariff, Executive Director of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER), Malaysia; Steven Hall, CEO, CNBC Arabia; Ihsan Jawad, Founder of Zawya.com; Martha Hamilton, Columnist of Your Financial Future, AARP Bulletin Today, and Hu Shuli, the Founding Editor of Caijing Magazine, China.

The session explored the reasons why media were not questioning the financial situation enough, before the crisis. When foreign liquidity was draining out of the local markets, the media did not fully realize that people would not be protected from the impact. The panelists, therefore, agreed that investigative journalism must be encouraged in the region, with the media allowed easier access to decision makers.

The panelists also discussed that the stock market is not a good barometer on how the economy is doing. Too much focus on the stock market in the media takes away attention from the real crisis at hand. Before the global meltdown, the huge emphasis of the media was on the stock market and its growth rather than analyzing the debt and derivative markets. The fact that debt markets are on average 24 per cent larger than stock markets was completely ignored by the media.

Mohammed Ariff said: "It was not a big surprise that the media did not pay attention to this crisis because it has been in the making for a couple of decades. The US was consuming more than it was producing and there were serious fog lights in the global economy that were not interpreted by the media. For a journalist to take note of these subtle changes is asking too much.

"This crisis is partly structural and partly cyclical and therefore not easily visible for journalists. Journalism to me is reporting the message that comes out of a serious analysis, not speculation. In South East Asia, there is a lot of self-censorship and there is a tendency to downplay the negative views and playing up the positive news. This is a fact of life in Asia but is beginning to disappear alongside the emergence of new media."

Steven Hall said: "No media can predict the future. It's easy to look back now and find faults. The media has only a watchdog role. There is a balance to be struck between all the stakeholders in a publication. The ambiguity of media laws leads to people being unsure of what they can report on and what they cannot. There is a distinct lack of transparency which I'm hoping will change once the regional markets mature."

Ihsan Jawad said: "We need to question the role of media. The best thing media can do is focus on corporate governance and report the facts. We should really analyze the fundamental role of media which is transparency, wrongdoings, and corporate interest. However, media should have the responsibility of providing the analysts a platform, but not speculate about the future."

Martha Hamilton said: "Before the crisis, it was a very busy time for the business media covering different stories. There were many scandals and issues that were going on simultaneously. However, there were several stories done on the elements that came together in the crisis. The media knew there was excess liquidity in the world, but the media divides itself into certain subject areas and crossing into new areas is usually not encouraged."

Hu Shuli said: "In China, we are confident that we did a great job covering the crisis. Our magazine issued a very stern warning in early 2006 about the fundamental problems in an unstructured economy. We consider ourselves as the watchdog of the Chinese economy. But once the real crisis hit the US, many Chinese observers thought that China would not be directly affected."

Arab Media Forum 2009, held under the slogan 'Arab Media: Weathering a Period of Change and Crisis', includes a number of workshops and sessions, featuring eminent experts who will debate on some of the vital issues that concern the media in the region in the present circumstances.