Adham Center News

NOV. 30, 1999: The Adham Center was profiled in a feature piece by Al-Hayat, one of the Arab world’s most influential newspapers. The full text follows, translated by Dr. David Wilmsen, director of the Arabic and Translation Studies Division at AUC’s Center for Adult and Continuing Education.

At the American University in Cairo: Adham Center for Television Journalism: a “Mini-University” to Prepare
World-Class Newsmakers

Cairo–Amina Khayri

Most likely those in charge of the Adham Center for Television Journalism never imagined when it opened its doors in 1987 as an “experimental” training center for journalism majors that this center would become one of the most important sources of supply of the best cadres for the audio-visual industry in Egypt.

The route to the center does not lead one to imagine that this cramped space, down a subterranean flight of stairs, contains the most modern film and television production technology, represented in the form of equipment on a par with that used in the most prominent world television stations.

The scene in the equipment-crammed studio could be in any world television station: broadcasters, male and female, producers, photographers—everyone one of the cadres one would expect to find working in a television station.

When Dr. Abdallah Schleifer talks of the center it is as though it were his first-born son, with whom he had been blessed after long years of waiting. For Schleifer is steeped from head to toe in the world of journalism, especially in the Middle East, where he has worked for nearly three decades, beginning as director of the American NBC office in Cairo from 1974 to 1983, the year in which the then president of the university, Dr. Richard Pedersen, invited him to join the faculty.

Schleifer, who is over 6 feet tall, explains as he paces the room to and fro talking and looking for scattered papers, that Pedersen wanted to qualify Egyptian students to be world-class journalists:

“During the fifties, sixties, seventies and a part of the eighties, the television in the Arab World, and perhaps in all the Third World, was both the most up-to-date and, at the same time, the most provincial. This was for two reasons: in the past the press in the Arab World had been independent, before nationalization; as a result, despite nationalization and the transformation of the press into a tool of government propaganda, journalists retained the memories and culture of a free press. When television reached the Arab countries, there were strong ministries of information that played a basic role in the guiding of information. Television came in via these ministries and not through independent channels. Consequently, the task of television was the presentation of ‘information,’ a nice word meaning government propaganda.”

Schleifer goes on to explain the causes of the provincialism of television in the Arab and developing countries in the past by saying that the journalists of Al-Ahram, for example, had the ability to read foreign newspapers, such as Le Monde, The Times, etc., and in this way individuals learned. This was possible in the written press, and in broadcasting too.

He pauses for a moment, then affirms with a confident tone, that it is an irony of fate that Egyptian radio was truly excellent, because it had to rise to the level of the competition, since any citizen in the Middle East could, in those years, listen in to the BBC, or Voice of America, and so forth.

Returning to television, Schleifer says that Egyptian television was weak in the absence of competition. While television stations in the developed world were fashioning television journalism, and at a station such as NBC in the sixties and seventies we would cover a story with a team consisting of a photographer, a correspondent and a director, the Arab TV stations would cover the news with a photographer and no journalists, and the pictures would be shown with commentary taken from the official news agency.

Here Schleifer’s eyes shine, as talk turns to his favorite topic ñ the television center. Schleifer says: “Our task then in brief was to train a new generation as photographers, producers and correspondents to record a story , film it, montage it and produce a story with sound that complements the picture.”

Herein lies the role of the center, which gives a masters degree to eligible students seeking an intensive technical course in media, specifically television journalism, and most of whose subjects are taught using the most modern equipment used in this field.

In order to complete the course, the student has to finish 36 units, consisting of about 12 courses, including courses on TV news production, sound, discussion and presentation in TV broadcasts, and the gathering and production of stories, electronically and otherwise.

Schleifer notes that a number of the first batch to graduate at the center joined Egyptian Television, but suffered frustration as a result of the large gap between what they had learned and been trained to use, and the antiquated equipment at the television.

But all is not lost for Egyptian TV. Schleifer affirms that the bad experiences happened around ten years ago, but things have changed now. The fundamental change occurred with the advent of the satellite and the satellite broadcasting channels. The Egyptian viewer became able to watch stations of which the most prominent was CNN, the beginning being the Gulf War. The Egyptian viewer looked at the news materials offered abroad, and among those who watched these stations were the president of the country and the minister of information. Fortunately, “our kids,” by which he means the students of the center, were among the first ranks in the satellite revolution, and stations such as the BBC Arabic Service contacted the center looking for working staff.

Says Schleifer, with the air of a father proud of his children’s achievements in the real world: “They [the satellite stations] come to us seeking the largest possible number of center graduates able to travel abroad, though the largest number of graduates are young women, which makes the idea of travel difficult.”

To give just a sample of the center’s graduates, there is Yosri Fouda, executive director of the Al-Jazeera station in London, and Hani El Kaneesi, who works as chief correspondent at AP Television Agency in London.

Most center graduates (who number a little under one hundred) work for Middle East Television (MBC), Arab Radio and Television (ART), Orbit, Al-Jazeera, Nile TV, Nile News Channel and other specialized Egyptian channels, and Video CairoSat.

Others work inside and outside Egypt in the offices of CNN and AP Television, and BBC and Reuters Television, and NBC and the two Japanese stations, NHK and Asahi TV.

In addition to the masters, the center offers a course entitled “Introduction to Television Journalism” for one semester, for undergraduates, and also awards non-academic professional diplomas from time to time, especially for training in montage and studio management.

Because Abdallah Schleifer is multi-talented and outstanding in the field of public relations, he succeeded in 1987 in obtaining a grant in the amount of 300,000 US dollars from American Schools and Hospitals Abroad, a sector originating in the United States Agency for International Development. The Center also obtained a Japanese grant for 100,000 US dollars.

In 1988 the name of Kamal Adham, the recently deceased Saudi businessman, was given to the center, and the deceased would habitually contribute at least 75,000 dollars annually to the center for the upgrading of its equipment.

The center presently owns equipment worth about one million dollars, in addition to a van presented by the late Kamal Adham, which will be changed for a four-wheel drive vehicle to be used by the students for their practical training inside and outside Cairo. The late Kamal Adham likewise funded two scholarships at the center, one for an Egyptian and one for a non-Egyptian.

Thus, in less than twelve years, has the Adham Center for Television Journalism been transformed into a crucible for the production of outstanding cadres in the field of television journalism. Suffice it to say that having the masters from the center means that its bearer is capable of filming, producing, editing, presenting, and fine-tuning any news topic with an efficiency and professionalism comparable to those to be found in any world news station.

It is likewise not strange that the center’s annual graduates’ evening, which takes place in AUC’s Oriental Hall, should have become a forum for the appointment of graduates in the presence of the leaders of the world and local news industry.

Abdallah Schleifer’s passion for the center and its achievements, which have made it into a “mini-university” within the American University, should come as no surprise either.

TBS the Electronic Journal
TBS, or Transnational Broadcasting Studies, is an electronic journal dealing with issues of broadcasting and transmission without regard for national boundaries, and is published by the Adham Center twice yearly.

Articles published treat technology, multicultural issues, and the political and economic trends in this international field. The contents of the paper range from articles to studies, documents and discussions.

An editorial advisory board contributes to supporting TBS, among whose members are the director of New Skies Satellite and former president of Turner International Robert Ross, the news director at the Middle East Television Center Edwin Hart, and others.

Managing editor is Sarah Sullivan; the website is http://www.tbsjournal.com

Sony Gallery
The Sony Gallery, opened in 1991 at the Adham Center for Television Journalism, is the first gallery in Egypt dedicated to still photography and remains the only one in Egypt specializing in photojournalism.

Some of the more notable exhibitions presented there include: “From al-Khafaga to Kurdistan” by the Time photographer in Cairo, Barry Iverson; “Middle East Portfolio” by Tom Hartwell, who has worked for both Time and Newsweek; “Afghanistan–a Forgotten People” by Tony O’Brien, who has contributed a photo to Time–Life; and “Terrorism: Egypt’s Secret War” by the former AP Agency photographer Norbert Schiller.

The goal of the gallery is the development of sensitivity towards the visual as an essential element in the practice of television journalism.