A recent media conference in Alexandria, Egypt titled Reporting Across Borders: Freedom of Information in the Digital Age reminded me of the power of words to build bridges.

The conference, organized by the International Center for Journalists and supported by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, drew 40 leading journalists from around the world. It was held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a facility that builds on the legacy of Alexandria's ancient library and serves as “a symbol of the alliance of cultures,” according to Emmanuel Kattan of the Alliance of Civilizations.

The focus of discussion was how journalists can promote responsible dialogue between different cultures.

“It's hard to exaggerate the role of the media in shaping perceptions of faraway places, especially areas of conflict such as the Middle East,” said Jonathan Wright, the former Cairo bureau chief for Reuters, in his keynote address, The Middle East and the Media – Persistent Flaws and the Possibilities for Change.

“Unless [people] have a special interest in the subject, they pick up images and scraps of information from school, from films, perhaps from chance references in novels, occasionally but rarely from personal contact with Arab immigrants, but lastly and most intensively from what they see on television and read in newspapers and magazines,” he said. “Coverage of the Middle East is often sparse and sporadic in widely circulated Western media, and often it takes the form of domestic news with an international dimension.”

He named “essentialism” as one of the greatest barriers to effective journalism – the belief that there is a specific set of characteristics by which something can be defined. “What we as journalists have to do is wear down on that,” he said.

Christian Kolmer of Media Tenor International, an organization which reads and analyses news content in a systematic way, gave a presentation on Media Research on Muslim-West Relations.
Research shows that religious issues don’t get much media coverage in the mainstream press, Kolmer said – though some political issues are framed in a religious way – and the overall attitude toward religion is negative in Western countries. Particularly disturbing is the “negative coverage of Islam in the West.”

Part of the problem is that the routine events of the religious calendar are not exceptional enough to draw media coverage, he said. But coverage of religion also is notable for its lack of personalization – or “religious celebrities” – with the exception of the Pope.

“Religions could profit if their leaders were engaged with the news in a positive way,” he said, adding that journalists also should “try to engage with religious leaders.”

Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues led a discussion on the growing use of the Internet and social networking in the Muslim world.

She spoke about the myth of the “sleepy Egyptian village” and pointed to the clichés and stereotypes Western media like to pull out when reporting about Arab countries and Islam.
I was invited to speak on a Feb. 17 panel on Islam in Europe and North America. I presented the U.S. perspective alongside journalists from Al Jazeera and Radio France.

Our discussion touched on interfaith dialogue, which has become increasingly popular in the U.S. since 9/11. I was able to speak about the efforts of Bishop John Bryson Chane, who hosts the Abrahamic Roundtable (an academic discussion among Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders) and Washington National Cathedral, which has hosted numerous high-level dialogues and interfaith services and truly serves as “a house of prayer for all people.” Look for my story on interfaith dialogue in the diocese in an upcoming issue of the Window.

As a conference participant, I also was asked to partner with a journalist from another country to write a story that helps build bridges and foster intercultural understanding. I teamed up with Aisha Algaiar, an Egyptian journalist who writes about women’s issues, family and society for Samra magazine (published by Dar Al-Watan in Kuwait), and we worked together on a story about autism. Our story was published in Arabic in Al-Watan, a daily newspaper in Kuwait.

We chose to write about autism as it has been named the fastest-growing developmental disability and affects families worldwide. We interviewed two families, in Washington and Kuwait, with adult children with autism and found that both faced similar challenges.

During the course of my reporting, I learned that Bishop Chane’s 9-year-old grandson has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. You can listen to the Bishop speak about his family’s experience with autism and about what it means to be created in the image of God at edow.org.

Working with Aisha was challenging: In addition to a language barrier, we had to contend with an eight hour time difference as well as different weekends. We both juggle careers and motherhood, and found ourselves exchanging ideas and information at odd hours of the day and night via e-mail and Facebook, with a little help from Google Translate.

But this experience cemented our friendship, highlighted our similarities as mothers, journalists  and women of faith and brought home the message of the conference in a very real way, which is best expressed by Hani Shukrallah, a consultant for Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo and the former editor of Al Ahram Weekly.

“There’s no such thing as an Islamic civilization and there’s no such thing as a Western civilization,” Shukrallah said. “There is one civilization which has diversified.”

Lucy Chumbley is the editor of Washington Window.