The truth set us apart

Two pages may not be enough to put in perspective events that shaped four remarkable decades of Khaleej Times. What if I fail to get the right thought process for such a task, I wondered as I began the column. Word count on my mind, I started with trepidation on the defining moments of history that this pioneering English newspaper featured on its pages. Pioneering. The word sticks in the head, but it's true. We set the stage for others to follow - a singularly proud achievement - and we are still relevant as a robust media organisation that sets the agenda which other outlets pick up. Indeed, we look and feel younger as we move with the times - seeking, searching, finding and fulfilling the promise we made to our readers back in 1978 - to make news relevant and dynamic, and never to rest on our laurels.
The modern media landscape is changing like never before. It's a challenging environment. Many tend to call it the news business where profits are held in higher esteem than people and events that shape our lives. Competition in the sprawling and crowded market is witnessing the death of many brands. Market realities, the Internet, social media, falling readership and fake news are the usual suspects for this demise. There's also Artificial Intelligence to contend with. It may appear that there's little scope to get the big picture and the message across in the midst of this tumult and the tectonic technological changes that are sweeping our world. How do we grab readers online and the audience attention? How do we remain market savvy and appealing to advertisers? By trusting our instincts and being aware of our role as a nation builder, the free Press, the Fourth Estate.
Khaleej Times has been unafraid to look at people and events that shaped our lives through gentle eyes in a jaundiced world where viral is the rage. Viral with rage would be more appropriate in an age which has been swept by a clash of ideas and ideologies. The lines between right and wrong are becoming blurred and indistinct. There's a dearth of conscience in the virtual and real world we inhabit. Emotions are hard to project through this visual and virtual assault of our senses. Emoticons are sorry substitutes for real feelings. Despite this, our pact with our readers remains solid and secure. It's the emotional connect that sets us apart. We are great listeners, and tap into their potential to do wonderful things for this country and the communities they live in. We remain inclusive to their ideas and take notice of the drive to excel, innovate and deliver while staying creative, bold and vibrant which makes us of a different stock. It sets us apart as we hit our fabulous forties. There's an old-worldly charm to what we do - which is good, clean, honest and direct journalism. It has been our mission, it's also our core competency, which gets a burst of youthful energy that helps us shape and stay ahead of the times.
The editors of this special edition had a great responsibility. The occasion demanded it. Forty has finesse and comes with loads of experience. We are in an interesting phase of our life - there's so much to look forward to, while looking back with pride at the years gone by. How did we get this far? What events shaped the destiny of the Middle East and the world? Those were days when politics in the region was unpredictable. Peace had a chance in 1978, yet the Cold War was at its peak.
On the technological front, the biggest development that year was, arguably, in music with the launch of the Sony Walkman which went on sale the next year and a generation of youth swayed to beats on the go. The Walkman is now extinct, cassettes have gone out of existence, Compact Discs have come and gone. Music is now up in the cloud, to be played on smartphones and gadgets. It's unreal, virtual and present. I often think that the era of touch-and-feel music died with CDs. We just hear it from up there, from a place we haven't been to or understand.
Now to the serious side of life and events that reshaped the state of the world. KT lived the story back then like we do now in a world that is assaulted by dangerous ideologies and organisations that pit people, countries and faiths against each other. There's a media war brewing online with hackers and cyber criminals running amok in their race for online domination. Dangerous countries and violent outfits have spread their tentacles online. Social networks have transformed into media outlets. They set rules, form communities and influence public opinion. The citizen has become a journalist and unverified facts and opinion are the new normal. Power to the people has been abused to polarize and divide, damage and destroy.
But back in 1978 when we took the media scene by storm, there were serious efforts at brokering peace in Palestine. There was fresh vigour and hope. The United States was a reliable partner unlike the Washington of today under the Trump administration that is seeking to exit from the Middle East. The US was involved in negotiations, it was committed to finding a solution to end decades of conflict. The first step was the Camp David accord signed between Israel and Egypt. A formal treaty between the arch-foes was signed later in 1979 - a diplomatic victory for all sides, a pact that has survived the test of time, regimes and domestic concerns. The same year, the Iranian Revolution broke out and a clerical regime came to power. The development shook the very foundations of a nascent liberal order that seemed to be emerging in the region. Proxy wars and the rise and spread of extremism were the fallout of this coup. The same year Russian troops invaded Afghanistan, a tumultuous event that triggered off modern terrorism, which saw the advent and mutations of groups like the Taleban, Al Qaeda and Daesh that we are confronting today.
Iran, meanwhile, saw itself as a major power in the Middle East, and Iraq would have none of it. We watched with shock and despair when hostilities between the two sides broke out in 1980 and continued for eight years. Two great civilizations were on course to destroy themselves and they came close to annihilation on several occasions. Every atrocity was committed - chemical weapons, child soldiers, ethnic cleansing. The toll: a million people dead. The result: a stalemate. A war-weary region picked up the pieces only to fight the first Iraq War in 1990 when Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait to be sent packing by a coalition led by the United States. Lebanon was lurching from conflict to conflict with sectarian strains showing. The Iranian and Syrian influence in the country gave birth to a deadly militia named Hezbollah in the early eighties that has since gained in political ascendency and now wields great influence over the government.
Our reporters covered those upheavals. We met refugees and visited camps, we told their plight to the world. We felt the story like no other newspaper in the region. We have been the voice of reason in the Middle East for over four decades and we remain outspoken in our views as we sift through fact from fiction, truth from falsehood, even as we marvel at the power of words and visuals.
War without reason became the norm with the 2001 Iraq and 2003 Afghanistan invasions. The folly was two-fold and continues to haunt the United States to this day. The 'war on terror' has turned into a sort of eternal war with conflicts breaking out in regions like Syria where new and old global powers are entrenched in a game of attrition for the spoils over dead bodies and debris. The damage has been done to the human psyche in these stricken regions. What's left are the ghosts of their great histories.
Pain and decay all around us has renewed our spirit to rise above the dust, distrust and suspicion with honest journalism that touches lives. We value the optimism in hard-work and honesty. Our pioneering spirit defined us forty years ago, our perseverance makes us unique today. So, put your trust in truth and credibility that have been KT's mainstay. It has made us a free-thinking, liberal media organisation. It shall set you free. 
Allan Jacob is Senior Editor with Khaleej Times