Syria’s new media landscape: taking stock one year on
Gio 16 aprile 2026
17:00
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One year after the fall of the Assad regime (December 2024), Syria’s media sector is undergoing its most profound transformation in decades. For the first in decades, Syrians are telling their own stories with greater freedom, shaping narratives once tightly controlled by authoritarian power. This panel examines the emerging post-regime information landscape and the challenges of establishing a democratic, credible, and resilient media ecosystem.
Across the country, media institutions are being rebuilt, legacy state outlets are being restructured, locally led initiatives are expanding, and diaspora media are returning to the scene. Yet profound obstacles remain—weak legal and regulatory frameworks, decades of decayed infrastructure, limited funding, deep social fragmentation, and a long-standing crisis of public trust. Narratives on the ground are equally complex.
The panel will explore how Syria’s emerging media ecosystem is linking past abuses, present realities, and future democratic aspirations by supporting truth and reconciliation processes, strengthening oversight of justice institutions, preserving collective memory, and countering denialism as Syrians reimagine national identity and institutional legitimacy.
By bringing together Hadi Al Khatib, Arwa Damon and Kholoud Helmi, this session offers a critical, first-year assessment of how Syrians are rebuilding their media landscape—and what this pivotal moment means for the country’s democratic future.
Moderated by Jenifer Vaughan.
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Hadi Al Khatib
Hadi Al Khatib is the founder of the Syrian Archive and the Managing Director of Mnemonic, a leading NGO dedicated to forensically collecting, preserving, and verifying open-source digital documentation. Mnemonic investigates human rights violations and international crimes, supporting a wide range of accountability actors. Mnemonic hosts the Syrian, Yemeni, Ukrainian, Iranian, and Sudanese Archives, and it provides rapid response support in other contexts.
Arwa Jabiri Damon
Arwa Jabiri Damon is a multiple award-winning journalist based in Istanbul and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA), a nonprofit organization that focuses on building a network of logistical support and medical care to help children who need life-saving or life-altering medical treatment in war-torn nations. Arwa has often focused her reporting on human stories, reflecting the emotional intensity of war through the people that she meets, ensuring that the reporting and the headlines focus on the impact of war. She is known for her humanitarian reporting and ability to keep her on-camera presence subtle and not overly dramatic. Until June 2022, Arwa was a senior international correspondent for CNN. She parted ways with the network to pursue other storytelling avenues and launched Scrappy Goat Media in July 2022 to embark on her first documentary venture as a director and producer, which has premiered in a number of festivals winning “Best Documentary” at the “Impact docs awards” and “Best Female Director” at ECU film festival in Paris among the multiple recognitions. During her sixteen years at CNN, she reported from across the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia. Arwa started her journalism career in Iraq in 2003 just before the US-led invasion began. Before joining CNN as a correspondent, Arwa spent three years covering Iraq and the Middle East as a freelance producer for various news organizations including Feature Story News (PBS) and CNN. She has extensive expertise covering Iraq and Syria. In 2018, she was awarded the George Foster Peabody Award for her reporting on the fall of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, in addition to winning three Emmys for that coverage, including Outstanding News Special for Return to Mosul. At the height of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015, Arwa followed and reported on refugees from Syria and Iraq as they traveled across the continent by foot, boat, and train, resulting in coverage that earned her both an Emmy Award and Gracie Award in 2016. Arwa was also recognized by the prestigious Investigate Reporters and Editors Award for her coverage of the US consulate attack in Benghazi. She was also part of the CNN 2014 Peabody winning team for her coverage of the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls in Nigeria and in 2011 was awarded an Emmy for her coverage of the Fall of Mubarak. Inspired by her experience reporting from war zones and war-torn nations, Arwa launched INARA in 2015. INARA’s incredible impact has been recognized by several awards, including the 2017 James W. Foley Humanitarian Award; the World of Children’s 2017 Crisis Award; the Syrian-American Medical Society’s Humanitarian Award; and Time Warner’s 2016 Richard Parsons Community Impact Award and Excellence in Service Award. Arwa has also covered multiple humanitarian and women’s issues in Niger, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere. She has also covered environmental and climate crisis related stories that took her from the Arctic to the Antarctic, Congo to Chad. Arwa graduated with honors from Skidmore College in New York with a double major in French and Biology and a minor in International Affairs. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts but spent most of her childhood in Morocco and Turkey. She is fluent in Arabic, French, and Turkish. She is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and continues to volunteer lead INARA, spending much of her time in the field and engaging in outreach and advocacy efforts.
Kholoud Helmi
Kholoud Helmi is a gender and media expert and the co-founder and board member of Enab Baladi newspaper established in 2011. She believes that women are key in the development, peace-building and stability. Before fleeing Syria, she was an eyewitness to the shooting of peaceful demonstrators, arbitrary arrests and massacres that occurred in Darayya and surrounding towns committed by Assad’s regime. She was the 2015 winner of the Anna Politkovskaya Award for reporting about the Syrian events, and the 2017 winner of the International Association’s Courage Under Fire Award for the documentary Cries From Syria. In 2016, Marie Claire magazine called her ‘the bravest woman in the world’. Kholoud holds an MA in media and development from SOAS, university of London, and is a Chevening scholar.
Jenifer Vaughan
Jenifer Vaughan (Fenton) is a media relations expert and spokesperson for the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria. With a career spanning CNN, Al Jazeera, Yale University, and the UN, she is a multi-award winner, including three Peabody Awards, recognized for her contributions to journalism. She has led teams covering major global events and served as the sole Poynter Fellow-in-Residence at Yale (2017–2018), where she focused on refugee narratives in the media. Additionally, she has worked with OCHA in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and UNHCR in New York. Jenifer holds a Master of Laws in International Law from the University of London, a Master’s in International Relations from Troy University, and a Bachelor’s in Journalism from the University of Arizona.
Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo
Il Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo di Perugia è un evento annuale che riunisce professionisti dei media, esperti di comunicazione e appassionati di informazione da tutto il mondo. Si svolge nel centro storico di Perugia e offre conferenze, dibattiti, workshop e opportunità di networking sui temi più rilevanti del giornalismo contemporaneo.