COJMC Diversity Series: Osama Siblani
University Communications
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03/16/2016
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51
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Osama Siblani is the publisher of The Arab American News, the largest and most widely circulated Arab American publication in the United States. He was inducted in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame on April 21, 2013. A recipient of the "Spirit of Diversity in Journalism Award" from Wayne State University.
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- [00:00:00.035](bright music)
- [00:00:04.648]My guest is Osama Siblani
- [00:00:06.573]who is publisher of the Arab- American news,
- [00:00:08.618]the largest and most widely circulated
- [00:00:10.902]Arab- American publication in the United States.
- [00:00:13.397]Thanks for taking the time out to talk to us.
- [00:00:15.306]Thank you. Thank you for having me here.
- [00:00:17.841]You have described yourself as an activist journalist.
- [00:00:21.173]Tell me what role you play in that capacity?
- [00:00:24.616]Well, I think journalism,
- [00:00:27.344]the way that everybody understands it,
- [00:00:29.773]that you write stories and you try to present the facts
- [00:00:33.116]on both sides,
- [00:00:36.585]or on every side of the story,
- [00:00:38.905]but you don't take a position on it.
- [00:00:42.249]You don't put your emotions in the article.
- [00:00:45.355]I happen to believe that this is in all journalism,
- [00:00:48.900]and I happen also to believe that
- [00:00:51.362]this does not exist, actually,
- [00:00:53.079]because we are human beings.
- [00:00:54.914]We feel and we have our thoughts about everything,
- [00:00:58.842]color, smell, everything,
- [00:01:00.962]and we are biased one way or the other.
- [00:01:03.813]I believe that I am a person that entered into journalism
- [00:01:08.811]from the engineering gates,
- [00:01:12.055]and I see things in three dimensions,
- [00:01:15.415]and I describe them the way I see them.
- [00:01:17.640]And also, I have a mission.
- [00:01:20.157]I wanted to promote my community in the mainstream.
- [00:01:23.918]I wanted to represent the people
- [00:01:25.956]that I believe that they were not represented,
- [00:01:28.852]well-represented, in the American mainstream media.
- [00:01:31.906]And therefore I come from a position
- [00:01:33.343]that journalism with guts, journalism with a mission,
- [00:01:37.682]journalism with activism.
- [00:01:40.824]You mentioned the mainstream media,
- [00:01:42.567]give me an example of where the mainstream media
- [00:01:44.613]has fallen short in how they represent
- [00:01:46.859]the Arab-American point of view.
- [00:01:48.768]Do you have time?
- [00:01:49.747](laughter)
- [00:01:50.595]How much time do we have?
- [00:01:52.365]Because I don't believe that they do
- [00:01:54.680]and that's in general, of course.
- [00:01:58.253]But if you wanted to go more specific
- [00:02:00.230]in the area that I came from, which is Michigan,
- [00:02:02.919]we have two major dailies that, for example,
- [00:02:06.477]in their newsroom no Arab- American exists,
- [00:02:09.699]or Muslim- American.
- [00:02:11.655]We are about 600,000 Arab-American
- [00:02:16.303]in the metro Detroit area,
- [00:02:18.595]and we have businesses
- [00:02:19.947]and if you add the Muslim-Americans to that,
- [00:02:23.131]because Arab-American can Christian or Muslim,
- [00:02:25.950]then you have 800,000 out of 9.5 million.
- [00:02:30.095]So why are we not represented in the newsroom?
- [00:02:33.895]Why we are not included as writers or as editors?
- [00:02:38.876]Diversity is important for the life
- [00:02:42.246]or longevity of any project
- [00:02:45.276]especially in journalism.
- [00:02:47.146]And this is not being realized by news media
- [00:02:51.606]whether in the print or in the
- [00:02:56.562]electronic media.
- [00:02:57.785]I was told that now certain
- [00:03:02.134]media outlets in Detroit
- [00:03:03.524]are looking for Arab-American to hire.
- [00:03:07.045]And when they decided to hire someone,
- [00:03:09.491]they called me and they said,
- [00:03:10.484]"You know, we hired somebody who was an Arab-American,"
- [00:03:12.894]and then later came out to be an Iranian.
- [00:03:16.187]Which is OK, I mean, but
- [00:03:18.003]to show you that they really don't know their constituents.
- [00:03:21.390]They don't know the difference between
- [00:03:22.566]an Iranian and an Arab.
- [00:03:25.683]The country's moving into the most intense part
- [00:03:28.330]of the presidential election.
- [00:03:30.821]What question do you think needs to be asked
- [00:03:33.025]of the candidates, that may be not being asked,
- [00:03:36.247]that would be important to issues facing Arab-Americans?
- [00:03:39.970]Well I think that Arab-Americans are like every American,
- [00:03:44.185]they're very concerned about where we are heading
- [00:03:46.465]as a nation.
- [00:03:47.843]And I think that what we have seen so far
- [00:03:51.084]on the Republican side of the
- [00:03:54.313]spectrum of presidential race
- [00:03:57.121]is a circus.
- [00:03:59.950]It's like they're kids,
- [00:04:01.995]they're fighting food fight.
- [00:04:04.117]And what we saw on the Democratic side,
- [00:04:07.387]perhaps more reasonable people,
- [00:04:10.086]and I'm not taking sides in here, but I'm just
- [00:04:11.948]describing the way things work.
- [00:04:14.155]But I think that, in general,
- [00:04:15.503]we have to recognize that the country
- [00:04:18.071]is not the same country that was 20, 30 years ago.
- [00:04:21.374]And I'm not talking about only September 11.
- [00:04:23.343]I'm talking about a lot of things that happened
- [00:04:25.990]since September 11 and before September 11
- [00:04:28.288]that has changed the face of our nation,
- [00:04:31.341]the direction of our nation, and the way
- [00:04:33.717]we deal with the rest of the world.
- [00:04:35.438]And I think that we should mature enough
- [00:04:37.088]to meet these expectations and these changes.
- [00:04:39.333]Otherwise, our country will not be in
- [00:04:41.343]the leadership position.
- [00:04:42.611]So my question would be,
- [00:04:44.120]"Are you ready, do you know the world that we're leading?"
- [00:04:47.025]We are the leaders of the world.
- [00:04:48.738]"Do you know the world that we are leading?"
- [00:04:51.232]Most of the presidential candidate will fail
- [00:04:54.505]in this question.
- [00:04:55.942]They will not be able to answer it
- [00:04:57.374]because I do not believe they understand
- [00:04:59.206]the world that we are leading today.
- [00:05:01.216]And even, they do not realize how much
- [00:05:03.689]our country has changed in the last two decades.
- [00:05:07.170]What can universities, like the
- [00:05:09.435]University of Nebraska, Lincoln, do better
- [00:05:11.850]to train the journalists of the future
- [00:05:14.624]so that they can cover complex issues like
- [00:05:17.106]some of the ones facing Arab-Americans?
- [00:05:19.529]Well first of all, I think that
- [00:05:20.966]I truly believe that changes will never happen
- [00:05:24.196]unless it originates
- [00:05:26.193]at the grassroot level, and at the academic level,
- [00:05:29.786]at the university level.
- [00:05:31.359]I think campus has always been and always
- [00:05:34.375]will continue to be the place where
- [00:05:36.222]things have been studied enough, developed enough,
- [00:05:40.961]talked about enough, and explained enough
- [00:05:45.371]and discussed enough in order to make sure
- [00:05:47.935]and then become a public commodity.
- [00:05:50.462]And I think that this has been the case before.
- [00:05:53.005]But most recent year, we have seen our university
- [00:05:56.522]declining on campus discussion,
- [00:06:00.156]and we do not have the discussion that we
- [00:06:01.831]used to have before,
- [00:06:03.957]like 10, 15, 20 years ago.
- [00:06:06.208]And we need to go back, to open
- [00:06:07.687]our campuses for discussion, and to engage
- [00:06:09.893]our students in diversity.
- [00:06:13.748]Not only on politics, but on everything.
- [00:06:16.154]Culture, and we need to introduce a new blood,
- [00:06:20.692]inject new blood into the discussion on campuses
- [00:06:25.536]because it has been really dead for a while.
- [00:06:28.683]And I think, unless we do that, our campuses
- [00:06:32.405]are not going to be as effective as they used to be.
- [00:06:35.463]Alright, well thank you very much for joining us.
- [00:06:37.542]My pleasure, thank you very much.
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