Here, I should mention the role played by the Qatari leadership during the 1994 civil war in Yemen, maintaining the country’s territorial unity. This particular event exposed the gap between the reality of the mass media and the government policies. There came the idea of creating an out-of- the-ordinary news network; an example to follow in the Arab world and beyond. By 1995, The Father Emir decreed that the Information Ministry be dissolved, simply for being linked to censorship and limiting freedoms. It heralded a new dawn; a new era for the media in our region. Another milestone on Qatar’s journey towards the new reality of mass media was the famous ‘Affairs & Opinions’ talk show on Radio Qatar. The bold programme was a breakthrough; especially as the Radio Qatar waves reached all the Gulf countries. When I was asked to present a report to the Qatari leadership on the show, I simply wrote: “A wider margin of freedom is needed; the scope of affairs needs to broaden to include the unspoken of issues.” Slowly but surely, Qatar’s media vehicles started to move in the right direction. My last assignment as Information Minister was to the GCC ministerial level summit in 1995. The conferring parties knew about the dissolution. In his farewell message, a fellow GCC minister said: “We
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