Excerpts from a Keynote Address by Her Royal Highness Princess Rym Ali of Jordan.
Note: The full text of Princess Rym's speech is here.

The double-edged sword of the media is well-known to all of us, but it takes on another dimension as information is no longer the prerogative of journalists but available to all through increasing access to ever-evolving technology. With all the blogs available, with all the access to images depicting all sides and with all the willingness in the world to bring about mutual understanding, one would think there were no room for misunderstanding. The overflow of information is such that it becomes like a tower of Babel—and making sense of it all can be challenging, to say the least.

In this context, more than ever today, Arab and American journalists have a crucial role to play.

But there are limits to what even journalists in this pivotal position can do, when faced with certain realities, as I found out during my time reporting for CNN in Iraq.

I had thought—maybe a bit naively—that as an Arab journalist working for a Western news network with both a domestic and an international audience, I was in an ideal position to truly shed light on what was happening in Iraq, in all objectivity of course, but with the extra advantage of understanding the culture and language. I also felt that with my understanding of the West, where I had grown up as a child and where I later studied and was trained, I could bring some answers to the questions asked from across the Atlantic, about this faraway land many were told would be the model for democracy in the Middle East.

With that in mind I would eagerly go about my business in Baghdad, asking questions to Iraqis from all walks of life. But I would invariably be the one faced with questions, such as: Are you going to tell us that the greatest military power in the world is truly incapable of restoring electricity to our people? Is there really nothing they can do to restore law and order? Is it possible that this was not all calculated from the start to take advantage of our oil?

The questions were numerous and challenging.

What do you tell Iraqis and Arabs who ask you why the world’s superpower cannot stop the looting, the kidnapping, the violence, or provide the minimum of electricity and water sanitation, and why U.S. authorities in Iraq did not count Iraqi civilian deaths?

And as you work hard to report on what you see, in the most unbiased way possible, what do you tell millions of viewers watching you in the United States, as you are asked yet other questions by an anchor based in Atlanta, New York or Washington, about why their sons and daughters are being killed on a daily basis, and why many Iraqis just don’t seem to appreciate their newfound freedom­—all in the two minutes of airtime allotted to you?

I admit there are days when I still wonder whether I could have provided better answers.

TOO MUCH INFORMATION, TOO LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

We are all, in the Arab world as in the West, grappling with the potential consequences of the overflow of unregulated content, some of which goes against intercultural dialogue and understanding.

Here, as much as in the United States or in Europe, we seek, for example, to eradicate child pornography on the Net.

Here, as much as in the United States or in Europe, we seek to control the spread and the content of violent and extremist web sites.

There is a large volume of other content on the Net that certainly does not promote or create paths to understanding between cultures, on the contrary, and that does not contribute to the harmonious and stable growth of our societies.

We perceive a great need to provide our youth, our people, with an education that allows them to take their time to harness, in a positive, knowledgeable and constructive way, the seas of "popular" wisdom that they now find on the Net.

We also need for the West, where access to knowledge, any kind of knowledge, may have become a constitutional right, not to consider countries such as ours as backward and in violation of freedom of speech, when we express concern at the content of the knowledge, the information to which our citizens, our youth in particular, are exposed.

As we suffer the consequences of an extremely volatile neighbourhood, we in Jordan feel it is important to balance security and stability concerns with the pressure, the urge, and the apparently inevitable occurrence of an unlimited, unfettered access of all individuals to all and every kind of content—at times simply created by individuals in search of an outlet to "gain their 15 megabytes of glory."

Princess Rym Ali was CNN correspondent in Baghdad from 2001–2004 before moving to Amman and founding the non-profit Jordan Media Institute as an Arab Center for Excellence in Journalism Education in 2007.

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