Amid news that Al-Jazeera America plans to hire 700 staffers in the US, open 12 American news bureaus and the hiring of Ali Veshi from CNN, it seems that Al Jazeera is intent on building a major brand for the Arab news network within the middle east as well as worldwide. Arab influence in the media is indeed increasing. We wonder who is doing PR for them in the region?
Accordingly, the high number of media executives on the 2013 ArabianBusiness.com list of the 500 most powerful Arabs in the world was also remarkable. “Once again we have produced what we believe to be the most comprehensive guide ever to Arab influence. This list is a celebration of the great work and contribution of Arabs all over the globe,” noted the Editor of the publication as the list included many luminaries. The “magazine defines power as influence” and indeed as we know, many in the communications industry are indeed influential.
Within this list was CNN Anchor Hala Gorani (CNN anchor), the Jon Stewart of Egypt as he has been called, Bassem Youssef as well as Mona Al Marri of the Dubai Government Media Office who has been described as a Public Relations guru.
Some of the prominent media executives on the Arabianbusiness.com list of interest to those of us in the communications business:
- Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia is the most powerful Arab in the world for the 9th year in a row. He is the second-largest voting shareholder in News Corp., an owner of Twitter, owns 90% of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International, 2 daily newspapers and much more.
- Mazen Rawashdeh ranked #5, and he is the head of operations for Twitter.
- Elie Khouri ranked as #23 – he is the CEO of MENA Omnicom, the advertising and marketing company.
- Joseph Ghossoub, chairman and chief executive officer of MENA Communications Group (MENACOM), parent company of Young & Rubicam ranked #25
- Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi is one of the most notable people in the world on Twitter – as Time Magazine remarked, even if he isn’t known to many outside of the Middle East according to Arabianbusiness.com he is the 35th most influential Arab in the world.
300 Million People in the Arab world know these folks. Do you?