During the Play the Game Conference held in Tampere, Finland, between October 5-8, 2025, Abdullah Ibhais, formerly the media manager of Qatar’s World Cup Supreme Committee, described the various tactics employed by Qatar during the lead up to the World Cup to shift and manipulate media narratives surrounding the country. He said that for Qatar, the World Cup was a reputational campaign aimed at gaining global legitimacy and branding Qatar as a modern country. He explained that Qatar would attempt to silence criticism by admitting its imperfection and by saying that criticism would only hinder progress, and he said that in the Arab world, Qatar would argue that any criticism was aimed at the Arabs and the Muslims and not at Qatar itself.
In addition, Ibhais said that Qatar specifically wanted more positive media content about it and established a dedicated newsroom with over 20 journalists which would issue press releases and media kits to journalists. He said that many players functioned as unofficial ambassadors for Qatar, with various in-kind agreements and shared interests that were not announced to the public.
Later in his speech, Ibhais revealed that Qatar would also specifically target journalists from across the world, gathering information about them from their social media accounts and from their writings, determining who was friendly or hostile to Qatar, giving preferential treatment to those who were friendly. He also said that these insights were shared with...
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