Adham Masters Students Contribute to NBC

During the war in Iraq, Dawna Friesen and Keith Miller-the NBC correspondents covering Arab World reaction from Cairo-spoke with authority when reporting on the way Arab media and the Arab street were reacting to the war. They spoke with authority, not because they could read Arabic-they don't-but because two Adham Center graduates were working as temporary-hire news desk editors monitoring the Arab media for the NBC reporters. Nada El Messlawi and Lobna El Elainy started in on their new job on the first day of the war.

Each day, in a seven-day work week, El Messlawi and El Elainy went through all the Egyptian and Arab newspapers and provided the correspondents with summary translations of what they felt were the most important reports and commentaries; commentaries that reflected both the government's and the opposition's points of view.

But there was more to their work than translating from the press. When demonstrations broke out, they were there, working as field producers interviewing the protestors. El Messlawi and El Elainy also monitored the local Egyptian and Arab satellite TV channels such as Al Jazeera and Abu Dhabi to keep the correspondents informed as to how Arab television was playing the story.

Working in a professional news network like NBC was a great experience for the two young women. They discovered how professional TV journalists handled news; how it was gathered, and reported live or on tape; and how it was interpreted by the NBC staff. Through highlighting the Arab perspective of the war, they also got to know and understand the Western viewpoint. They confronted both perspectives and had to come up with their own as well. Comparing different cultures, one learns to become more tolerant, receptive, and understanding and it becomes clear from talking to them that this kind of work broadens one's personal horizons. The two graduates described it as "an overwhelming experience."

Nada El Messlawi and Lobna El Elainy will complete MA degrees in television journalism at the Adham Center this June; El Messlawi has already started work as a program producer at the Arab satellite channel MBC. Both young women share the same ambition for the future: to work for an Arab network as a producer or correspondent. El Messlawi would prefer to work more in documentaries.

The Adham Center gave El Messlawi and Elainy the opportunity to work with an internationally renowned TV network. The NBC correspondents relied on their work and, according to NBC Cairo producer Charlotte Gubash, "They worked hard and were terrific."

By Azza Enanie