-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/print.asp?ArticleID=49379
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Friedman walkout raises eyebrows
Dubai | By Mildred Fernandes | 29/04/2002
Thomas Friedman walking out of the open forum during the first session as Ben
Bradlee, Eric Rouleau and Martin Wollacott look on. ©Gulf News
The dramatic walkout by Thomas Friedman, the award-winning Foreign Affairs
columnist for the New York Times, cast a temporary pall over the opening session of
the second Arab Media Summit at the Emirates Towers hotel yesterday.
Friedman, whose appearance at the summit was a last-minute surprise, was the first
guest speaker of the day, following speeches by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al
Maktoum and Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League.
Although Friedman began his presentation by assuring the assembled audience that
he would welcome a dialogue on specific questions, that assurance was short-lived.
In the question-and-answer session that followed presentations by Friedman,
Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, Eric Rouleau of Le Monde and Martin
Woollacott of The Guardian about the Western media and its views of the Arab
world, three audience members questioned Friedman about the bias in his work and
about Israeli injustices toward Palestinians.
The fourth question, from a Saudi Arabian national, prompted an outburst from
Friedman. "Let's get one thing real clear," he said, in response to the Saudi
national's
statement about Friedman accepting a Saudi government-sponsored trip to the
kingdom.
Mohammed Boo Dai
"I came here now at my own expense, at the expense of the New York Times. That
applies to my trip to Saudi Arabia also. You can say whatever you want, but I will not
sit here and listen to that garbage."
A visibly angered Friedman then flung his translation headset into the air, stormed
past the other delegates and out of the hall.
Friedman, whose impressive career includes an eight-year stint with the New York
Times reporting from war zones in and around Israel, the Palestinian territories,
Egypt and Lebanon, was also recently responsible for breaking the news of Saudi
Crown Prince Abdullah's peace plan to the world after being invited to the kingdom
by the prince.
"I'm paid to have an opinion, paid to be subjective and not objective," he told
audience members before the walkout. "I'm paid to be biased, as it were. That's the
object of being a columnist."
It was that openness that surprised Mohammed Boo Dai, the Saudi Arabian lecturer
whose question triggered the Pulitzer Prize-winner's walkout. Boo Dai said
Friedman's reaction could have been caused by a translation mistake.
"I am not happy with what happened, because I respect Friedman," Boo Dai said
after the end of the summit's first session. "I wanted to ask him why, when he had
the chance to come to Saudi Arabia and meet many people, he would walk out in the
same way if somebody said something he did not like."
Boo Dai was disappointed by the columnist's behaviour despite Friedman's eventual
return to the hall.
"He came back, yes, but he cut my speech, he did not let me finish, which is not
good. He must wait till I am finished and then speak. I am not saying he took the
plane from America to here, but that he made round in Saudi Arabia by special
plane, not from America - this was to make it easy for him to meet people from all
over, because Saudi Arabia is a big country.
"But I think he did not understand me, and maybe something was wrong in the
translation." Boo Dai, who holds a doctorate in Arabic literature, said he reads Arabic
translations of Friedman's columns.
© Al Nisr Publishing LLC - Gulf News Online
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